


Memory, My Love, Is A Place Of Shadows And Fog

by leonidaslion



Series: Suite!verse [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dark, Dubious Consent, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:49:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bluebeard is meant to be a cautionary tale...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here she is! I didn't want to make anyone wait longer than they already had for this installment, so I'm posting each bit as soon as it's been edited. The whole fic should be up by the end of the week. :)
> 
> [Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/9415.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [More Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/13379.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [Art + Fanmix](http://abendiboo.livejournal.com/13726.html") by abendiboo
> 
> [Vid](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyyQMBKWG3I) by loverstar  
> [Trailer](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWxN30zvGw8) by loverstar  
> [Vid 2](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJmC3R8PME4&feature=related) by loverstar
> 
> [Audiofic](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/category/seriessuiteverse) by juice817

After that turbulent morning, things even out again—a little too much, maybe; after spending such a long time saturated with tension, the gradual relaxation is a heady, reeling rush. Like standing up too quickly, or that pounding, blurred throb that comes after a near suffocation, when the air floods back in with painful alacrity. It’s a numbing pulse that refuses to sharpen, leaving Dean adrift and confused about the flow of disorienting days.

When he tries half-heartedly to measure the weeks by the changing world around him, he finds it a useless endeavor. Sam remains a measureless cipher. The sky outside ( _Dean doesn’t dare get close enough to the broken window to see more than that_ ) holds a scorched, sullen red. Although the suite’s renovations resume, they advance in unpredictable fits and starts that do nothing to provide Dean with a rational timeframe.

One day, a portion of a wall is replastered. On the next, with the rest of the wall still flaking and bowed, the project is abandoned in favor of replacing the cracked picture window with a heavy pair of sliding doors.

The doors open out onto thin air for a countless procession of days ( _Dean stays further away than usual, doesn’t look at them, doesn’t let himself think about it_ ) while the ceiling is spackled and the carpet torn up and replaced. Walls too badly wrecked for refurbishment are knocked flat and rebuilt—straight once more, so that the tormented, rippling warps left by Sam’s power become nothing more than an incomprehensible, nightmarish memory. Then, with one wall left only half-painted ( _rich, royal blue this time; Sam claims the color will be more calming for Dean_ ), the skeletal outline of a balcony finally begins to extend outward on the other side of the glass doors.

Dean witnesses the shifts every evening, but he doesn’t see any of the remodeling done. He doesn’t hear it either, shut up in Sam’s study as he is whenever Sam leaves to tend to the war. This time, he’s a willing prisoner—walks himself in as soon as he’s done with his morning shower without having to be told. Being blind and deaf all day, shut up in this breadbox of a room, is suffocating, but it’s better than the way Dean knows Sam’s new work crew would look at him if they could. Better than the disgust and scorn in their eyes.

So Dean is grateful for Sam’s consideration in setting thicker wards on the walls—walls strong enough to keep the sound of even another explosion out, if need be. So Sam claims, anyway, and Dean sees no reason to doubt him. The door is also covered in ritual and power—carvings Sam etches into the wooden surface himself, curling up wood shavings with seemingly casual brushes of his finger.

That’s a daylong project, and the amount of power Sam pours into the work is enough to fill the room in a murky, golden mist. The sickening, sullying power inside Dean’s head is throbbing by the end of the day. It pulses restlessly against Sam’s entrapping wall in search of release, both a part of Dean and yet not. He hates that he can’t figure out whether he’s terrified of the power’s possible escape or if his skin is crawling because he knows how the power feels. He’s trapped in here, isn’t he? He’s fucking caged and cornered and he needs to be set loose, he needs some goddamned air or he’ll go insane for sure.

That sore, golden glow isn’t the only part of Dean panting for attention, of course—his dick is like one of Pavlov’s dogs these days, ready and eager after even the faintest brush of power. The fact that, sometimes, he can find it in himself to succumb to that desire, seems to make his urges worse instead of better. Like a starving man whose hunger flares at the first taste of food.

On that day, the Day of the Door, Dean’s ability to accept the things he wants is limited, but as it turns out, he isn’t given a choice.

Sam fetches him from the couch, where he’s trying to ignore the needy throb of his body and soul by burying himself in Bullitt, and leads him over to the door. He presses Dean’s hand into the surface—still warm from all of Sam’s work, still coated in power. The traces latch onto Dean’s skin eagerly, they twist beneath the surface and get into his muscles and bones. Even through the glow of excess power filling the air, Dean sees the sigils in the wood flare into the same red-gold of the setting sun. The power twining through him seems to whisper in his head, welcoming him with a warm, pleasurable pulse even as Sam moves in close behind him.

Dean’s knees buckle, and he can’t think well enough to fight the fall that’s coming—Sam catches him. Sam holds him up. Sam whispers in Dean’s ear as he covers Dean’s hand on the door with one of his own, pressing it more firmly against the wood, and slides his other hand into the sweats riding low on Dean’s waist.

Hours, it feels like—months or maybe even years of that power feeling him up inside and out while Sam’s voice purrs a steady stream of love and filth into his ear. The hand in Dean’s pants refuses to be still, and Dean is cupped, and stroked, and fondled, and kept hanging on the cusp of climax without ever being allowed to tip over.

By the time the snap comes—an identifying chain of connection that Dean feels echoed through his soul—Dean doesn’t have more than the most fleeting shred of rationality left to him. All he knows is the warm, living wood beneath his palm, and Sam’s body blanketing him from behind. All he can comprehend is Sam breathing promises against his neck, and the feel of Sam’s fingers moving on his cock—the glide slick now, eased by the steady stream of precome Dean has been leaking since Sam first pressed his fingertips to wood.

There isn’t even enough left in him for a proper orgasm, although his body tries. Trapped between Sam and the door, Dean’s muscles snap tight. His breath catches, stilling the steady stream of low noises he didn’t even know he was making, and he shakes as Sam finally stops talking and bites down on the nape of Dean’s neck instead.

Sam is moving against him—Sam’s cock a very hard, very obvious source of heat pushing the fabric of Dean’s sweats into the crack of his ass—and then Sam stiffens and makes a muffled cry around Dean’s skin. The pressure wave of power that passes through the room as he comes leaves Dean even dizzier than before, limp and unresisting in Sam’s arms.

Sam keeps him pressed against the door for several minutes more—less for any mystical reason now, Dean senses, and more because Sam wants to enjoy the moment—and then, finally, kisses the aching spot on the back of Dean’s neck.

“It knows you now,” Sam whispers. He shifts away far enough for Dean to feel how wet his sweats are—the front from his own come, the back from Sam’s—and Dean shuts his eyes on a sudden wave of disgust. He swallows his own self-revulsion down in the next instant, though, and doesn’t fight as Sam helps him out of the dirty clothing.

Fighting doesn’t help, it only makes Sam angry, and Sam is difficult enough when he’s in a good mood.

He’s grateful for the space when Sam steps back, and tries to turn and move on his own—only to have his quaking, useless muscles tip him forward against his brother’s chest. Dean grunts, taken by surprise at how goddamned weak and lightheaded he is—he’s exhausted, feels like he’s been kicking and screaming instead of letting Sam take what he wants.

“Easy, baby,” Sam murmurs—not surprised at all, of course, because unlike Dean he knows what the hell is going on—and then, in a move that shouldn’t be humiliating at all anymore, but somehow still is, hoists Dean off the floor and carries him to the bed.

It takes almost a full day for Dean to recover—longer than that before his thigh muscles stop shaking when he stands up.

He isn’t terribly surprised when he braves the study door again and it opens at his thought. When it closes tight again on his whim.

He still thinks there are other ways Sam could have given him this sort of agency over his place of refuge—with the key to a perfectly ordinary padlock, for starters—but Sam seems so proud about his gift that Dean doesn’t have it in him to complain. And to have even this much control is… Dean has to admit that it feels good. It feels like a well-earned reward, and Dean can’t even remember the last time he had one of those.

So the study is safe, and has become his place as much as Sam’s—the door won’t open to anyone else; Dean knows that without having to be told. But it’s still a prison—worse, it’s solitary confinement.

Dean thought he was lonely before, but ever since that disastrous confrontation with the workers and the painful morning that followed, he literally hasn’t seen anyone but his brother, and Sam’s smothering presence doesn’t actually count as company.

He actually misses Ruby. Fucking _Ruby_.

Yeah, okay, she’s a demon, and Dean would love to be able to drive a knife into her lying, black heart, but in retrospect Dean realizes that she’s also the closest thing he’s had to a friend since Sam dragged him up here. A forced, uncomfortable friendship, sure, but she actually had some funny observations to make about human customs, and trading insults with her used to make him feel almost like himself again.

Ruby was someone whose eyes Dean could meet without tearing himself apart inside. She was someone who challenged him in ways that made him remember that he used to be a hunter, instead of a kept ( _possession_ ) consort.

But of course Ruby hasn’t been by—not when she’s busy atoning for her part in Dean’s most recent near-death experience. Sam won’t tell Dean just what that atonement consists of ( _and the feral hint of jealousy in his expression the one time Dean tried to ask shut him up on that subject immediately_ ) but Dean knows she isn’t dead. The fact that she ended up saving his life bought her that much at least.

Sometimes, Dean thinks that he’s being punished as well—that being shut up in his brother’s study day after endless day is the penalty for trying to leave Sam. It’s his punishment for daring to think in terms of his own happiness and salvation over his brother’s. Because as relieving as it is to be safely shut away from the virulent hate of the outside world, sitting around with nothing to do for hours on end isn’t exactly a bowl of cherries either.

When Dean was out in the main room, he had Ruby to talk to, or the workers to watch, or the TV to click on. In here, he has four walls to stare at. He has Sam’s desk, which he knows he isn’t supposed to mess with. He has a floor to ceiling bookcase along one wall filled with tomes Sam collected from god knows where, and which Dean can’t bring himself to touch. The pages smell like blood. The bindings are an unpleasant texture underneath his fingers. Like old, withered skin.

It’s close to torture, sitting in Sam’s armchair staring at the walls for hours with nothing to do but anxiously look forward to his brother’s return.

And Dean _does_ look forward to it. During those seemingly endless days of renovation, he lives for the sound of the door clicking open at his brother’s touch.

It’s partially the fact that Sam’s return signals an end to the relentless boredom, but Dean doesn’t even bother pretending to himself that that’s the only reason.

Things are easier when Sam is around. Now that Dean has accepted Sam’s Truths and is forcing himself to permit his brother to wrap around him like honey-laced air, being with Sam is almost soothing. He finds himself relaxing at the first brush of power over his shoulders and back—feels all of his fears and nagging, worrying thoughts about the unpleasant world beyond the suite slip away as Sam’s eyes light on his skin.

After who knows how many weeks of practice, it’s finally becoming instinct to pull Sam in for a welcome back kiss. That sort of thing isn’t technically required anymore, now that Dean has embraced his self-imposed isolation and is allowed to keep his voice, but if he’s going to find his way to submission, then he needs to move past requirements and into electives. He needs to remember how to touch Sam because he wants to, and not just because Sam is forcing him to it.

If he still can’t manage to hold it together through anything more than some over-the-clothes friction or a couple of mutual hand jobs, then that’s still more than he could handle before. And the way that Sam smiles at him after every initiated touch, no matter how small—the fond, grateful warmth in Sam’s eyes—leaves an accomplished, almost proud, glow in Dean’s sore chest. He can’t always manage the mental trick of acceptance, but more and more, he doesn’t mind Sam’s power slipping past his defenses to stroke against his mind and soul.

At times, Dean even thinks he might be coming to _enjoy_ waking with his brother’s body curled tightly around his and Sam’s power a hot, overwhelming pressure against his insides. When that possessive, loving duality of sensations drives Dean into an early-morning orgasm before he’s really even awake, he doesn’t always freak out afterwards anymore. Hell, there are days when he reaches back to grip Sam’s head in encouragement, hips rhythmically driving his cock forward into the air in helpless, needy jerks while his brother allows his mouth to be dragged into position against the side of Dean’s throat. And when Sam bites down on those days, marking him, Dean cries out as he comes—noisily, the way Sam always used to like it.

Afterward, those times when Dean can figure out how to enjoy it, Sam cradles him close and whispers praises in his ear. Sam reminds him of other mornings, other fucks from Before, and Dean closes his eyes and lets the memories wash over him while his heart beats in time with his brother’s, while Sam’s breath seems to fill both of their lungs.

Those moments never last, of course. Dean inevitably screws it up—he thinks too goddamned much and, during the lapses between acceptance, he feels worse than ever. A terrible clarity settles over his mind then, and he sees how filthy he’s become—sees himself for the sullied, broken pet that Sam has made of him. He hears his voice repeating the Truths Sam showed him.

Weak. Unloved. A lost cause who owns no one’s faith—hasn’t earned it. The sort of man who’ll be better off as a possession, who has always needed someone to tell him what to do, where to go, how to handle himself.

He was always meant to be owned by Sam, and the moments he’s closest to accepting that fact are the moments he most despises himself for it. A couple of times, it gets bad enough that Sam has to restrain him—has to hold Dean down and kiss him and stroke him with soft, warm whispers of power until Dean’s brain isn’t working well enough to register how disgusting and pathetic he is. Sam holds Dean’s body still with bonds of power until Dean stops struggling, and then he releases Dean and backs away—he leaves Dean strung out and wanting, refuses to finish things when Dean’s thinking that way.

When the arousal dampens enough for Dean to process what just happened, he breaks a table, or throws a lamp into the wall, or takes a swing at Sam’s head. The surge of violence always leaves him drained and pliable again, though, and when the crisis has passed for the time being, Sam holds him again while he cries in weak, defenseless gasps.

But day after day, hour after endless hour, Dean is finding acceptance easier to achieve. He’s spending longer spans remembering how it feels to love Sam, and less time dwelling on the sort of person that devotion makes him. It’s better to concentrate on how special Sam is—how kind he is to have ever fallen in love with someone like Dean in the first place—than to focus on his own glaring deficiencies as a human being.

The suite continues to rebuild itself around them, with Sam adding minor improvements and tweaks as it goes—the balcony for one, a dumb waiter in the main room’s wall for another—and Dean knows that he’s transforming as well. He’s becoming what Sam wants just as much as the room that contains him, and he’s just as powerless to do anything about it.

Most days, he can’t wait for the renovation to be complete.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Dean. Dean, please, look at me.”

It’s him again. The blue-eyed Sam. The one that won’t leave Dean alone no matter how many times Dean tells him to get the fuck out.

But just because he keeps popping up doesn’t mean Dean has to look at him.

“Dean.”

There’s a gentle hand on his arm, and Dean tenses but doesn’t pull away. It might not really be his brother behind him, but the voice and the shape of the hand is still right, and Dean’s instincts are telling him to stay put, to remain pliant.

Don’t draw negative attention, don’t fight, don’t resist.

“Help is coming. You just need to hold on for a little longer.”

“You said that months ago,” Dean bites out, and then clenches his jaw. He’s not supposed to be talking to the dude; told himself he wasn’t going to encourage him or the fairytales he brings.

“Your brother’s defenses are stronger than we anticipated, but we’re getting closer. Please, Dean. What’s happened to you—this place—it isn’t supposed to be like this. Your destiny necessitates your redemption.”

Dean can’t suppress a bitter laugh at the word. Redemption. As though that’s something that could ever apply to something like him.

Blue-eyed Sam’s hand tightens on his arm, drawing him around, and Dean shuts his eyes tightly. He won’t look. He doesn’t want the tenderness and the compassion he knows he’ll find on this dream Sam’s face to mess with his head and fuck up all the progress he’s been making lately.

“You don’t believe you deserve to be saved, but you do,” Sam’s voice says. The words twist through Dean’s chest like a rusted strand of barbed wire, making it difficult to breathe. “Your brother has been lying to you. He utters falsehoods as easily as breathing. There are still those who believe in you. You are well loved. Your father—”

“Don’t you fucking talk about him!” Dean spits, lashing out and shoving the dream Sam away. The usual lies are bad enough, but he can’t hear any pitying, pathetic promises of his father’s faith. He won’t fucking listen to it.

He runs before this cruel shadow of Sam can speak again. He runs from that dream into another, where he finds himself bound and naked at the feet of a more familiar, destructive brother. Sam’s changed eyes and bloodied face fill the world, with the crack of ribcages and Sam’s amused laugh looped as a soundtrack. It’s sickening and terrifying—Sam with the skins of children dangling from his hands, Sam tearing people apart with hooks and chains and then wanting to touch Dean with dripping fingers—but it’s still preferable to the shame that the blue-eyed version of his brother always brings, and Dean is relieved to find himself here, in the screaming red where that imposter can’t seem to follow.

The lying, blue-eyed Sam refuses to leave Dean alone, of course. He comes nearly every night, with his sad eyes and his clumsy attempts at comfort, and Dean continues to struggle back into darker dreams. Back into the comfort of normalcy. Gradually, he realizes that his nightmares have become less about reliving Sam’s mutilations and massacres and more about Sam touching him. About Sam pressuring him, even in his sleep, to surrender.

The first time Dean dreams of Sam as he is now—the first time he dreams of this room, and those golden eyes, and of the possessive stroke of Sam’s power, of the boy king’s body and mouth and cock—and wakes with his own cock hard and throbbing between his legs, he doesn’t even make it all the way to the bathroom before puking. Sam is by his side immediately, one hand possessively resting on Dean’s lower back and the other rubbing lightly at his bruised, well-marked neck. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong, but from the happiness he radiates for the rest of the day, Dean thinks that’s because he already knows.

The books that start to appear in the study soon after, on a shelf that Sam has cleared of demonic texts, feel like a reward and forgiveness rolled into a neat, humiliating package. They’re westerns and crime novels, mostly, although a couple of what Dean thinks of as school books have been tossed in there as well—Catcher in the Rye, and some dumbass novel that looks like it’s about rabbits, of all things.

Dean doesn’t know how to respond to their sudden appearance, so for a few days he follows his brother’s lead and pretends nothing has happened. He ignores the books when he’s shut up in the study—doesn’t so much as glance at them casually, let alone take one down to read. But sitting around waiting for his brother to come back is boring as hell—a boredom that actually seems worse now that Sam has offered something to pass the time—and Dean caves after only three days.

When Sam starts up a conversation that night about whether Alex Cross is more badass in the books or the movies, Dean doesn’t feel the faintest stab of surprise. He doesn’t ask how Sam knows what he was reading. He doesn’t want to know.

Instead, he says, “Morgan Freeman is the motherfucking man, dude. No contest.” And then shoves another slice of pizza in his mouth.

Sam grins, and laughs, and it almost feels nice.

After dinner, Dean comes sitting in his chair, with a plate of pizza crusts on the floor beside him and the heel of Sam’s palm pressing down on his crotch—Sam’s eyes inches away from his own, Sam cataloguing every minute shift of expression and tracing around Dean’s parted lips with his tongue.

And Dean, unprompted and off-guard in the hazy afterglow of orgasm, catches Sam by the back of his neck and pulls him into a real kiss.

Yours, he thinks, arching his back at the sensation of Sam’s power unfolding through the tattoo. I’m yours.

None of that makes the climb out from Dean’s throat, but the smile Sam wears when they come up for air seems to indicate that he heard anyway.

The blue-eyed Sam comes more infrequently after that evening, and when he does appear he’s always frowning and sad-eyed. He stands in front of Dean with drooping, slumped shoulders and begs him to hang on, promising help that Dean no longer believes is going to come.

Dean startles himself awake as quickly as possible. He doesn’t like the way that blue-eyed Sam makes him feel inside anymore; doesn’t like the reminder that he’s filthy with Sam’s touch. That he’s contaminated. That Sam has violated him down to the core of his soul, and Dean couldn’t stop him. Dean let him.

But it’s getting easier and easier not to think about those things.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Some time after the renovations have finished, Dean becomes aware that something is happening Outside. Sam hasn’t said anything—he refuses to talk to Dean about the war—but Dean senses fresh tension in his brother’s silences. He reads the frustration in Sam’s eyes when he leaves for the front; notes the weariness dragging his brother’s steps when he returns every evening.

Sometimes, Dean wonders if maybe he could do something here to distract Sam, to keep him from the lines ... if maybe his brother’s absence would make everything fall to pieces. That’s a fool’s dream, though, and he knows it, so when those thoughts occur, he crawls into Sam’s lap and kisses them away.

“Beautiful,” Sam tells him, and “Love you, baby,” and Dean lets the praise fill him up inside and focuses on being as pleasing as he can manage. He doesn’t know who he is anymore, but he does know that the stranger he’s rapidly becoming doesn’t deserve anything but scorn and disgust. No, ‘becoming’ is the wrong term. This is who Dean always was—Sam is just turning his gaze inward and helping him see himself clearly, with all of his posturing and masks stripped away.

Dean’s pathetic, a spineless fuckup and a traitor to humanity to boot—a Judas, like those dead workmen named him—and no matter that Sam doesn’t call him on it anymore, he’s a whore as well.

He may be trading his body and soul for a little piece of mind instead of more tangible rewards, but Dean’s not quite stupid enough to think there’s a difference.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s a roar of rage that wakes him.

Dean lurches upright, one hand clutching at the sheets to keep them high around his chest and the other groping beneath his pillow for the weapon he hasn’t been allowed to keep since his last, brief taste of freedom. His body is alert and poised for action in a way it hasn’t been in ages, muscles singing with the need to strike out and neutralize the threat. His mind is still numbed and bleary, and even though the familiar surroundings of the recently-renovated suite register as he scans it, for a few precious seconds Dean is back in the Then—where’s Sam, Sammy’s in trouble, fuck what are they even hunting.

Then Sam emerges from his study, bare-chested and striding fast, leaking power the way he always does when he’s too upset to remember to hold it in. The power follows absent, usual paths to Dean and latches on, heating the cuffs around his wrists and igniting the lines of the tattoo on his back. As he’s jerked back into the present, Dean’s heart pounds even faster to match Sam’s pulse. His breathing speeds as well, forced into synch with his brother’s by whatever binding the last mutation of the tattoo locked them into.

He can taste Sam’s rage in his mouth and, at the back of his brain, buried deep and low where he thinks Sam isn’t even aware of it, there’s a tiny thread of fear.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

It’s not wise to draw Sam’s attention when he’s like this, but of course Dean only remembers that after the words are out of his mouth.

Sam was pulling on a shirt, but he stops cold at Dean’s question. His eyes snap over, taking in Dean’s position on the bed and narrowing in disapproval. Dean swallows thickly, trying to figure out how he’s pissing Sam off right now. The sudden lash of power that grips the sheet and jerks it out of his hand and onto the floor, leaving his naked body on display, answers that question swiftly enough.

Usually, when Dean has these careless ( _and useless_ ) moments of self-consciousness, the worst he gets from his brother is a disappointed, hurt look.

Usually, Sam isn’t enraged like he is now.

Dean keeps his mouth shut as his brother comes toward the bed, doing up the buttons on his shirt as he approaches. Sam’s eyes are moving over his body, an inspection hovering somewhere between possessive and cataloguing, and it’s a struggle not to move. Every instinct and shamed impulse screams at Dean to cover himself, to turn away. He can feel the dried, flaking remnants of what they did before falling asleep on his stomach and thighs—his own come mingled with Sam’s, and getting it off his pubes is going to be a bitch. He can see, in the lower edge of his vision, the mouth-shaped bruise Sam left on his chest. He knows there are more on his neck, leading back to his sensitive nape, where Sam is constantly staking his claim with more bruising and the reddened imprints of teeth.

Sam stops next to the bed. He’s close enough to touch—close enough for the heat of his power to pulse over Dean’s skin like a second heartbeat. The emotions thrumming into Dean through the tattoo on his back are too complex for him to even begin to sort out, but none of them are anything good.

“You don’t hide from me,” Sam says, the words clipped with fury.

Dean has to swallow several times before he can get his throat wet enough to rasp, “Sorry.”

“Turn over.”

Dean tenses and doesn’t move. Hand jobs are difficult enough—impossible, sometimes, no matter how hard he tries to let himself want it—but right now Sam is really pissed off for some reason. He’s angrier than Dean has seen him in a long time, actually, and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever seen that underlying, driving thread of panic that seems to be pushing Sam’s fury to new heights.

He isn’t sure what Sam wants from him. What Sam might be capable of in this state.

“Turn. Over.”

Dean’s stomach is flipping around now, and he can’t meet Sam’s eyes anymore. Dropping his gaze to his limp cock and the flaking come clinging to his skin, he digs his fingers into the mattress.

“Don’t make me say it again, Dean.”

There’s more than a hint of promise in Sam’s voice, and the pulse of his power shifts subtly, losing its familiar edge of comfort and bleeding to pain. Sam hasn’t ever done what he’s threatening now—has never hurt Dean deliberately in punishment—but Dean understands that something has goaded his brother into being capable of it this morning. Sam is desperate enough to do almost anything this morning, so furious and frightened that he’s riding the fine edge between sanity and madness.

Given the option between obeying and being hurt ( _then flipped over anyway, once he’s gasping and limp with whatever Sam does to him_ ), Dean reluctantly rolls first onto his side and then lies down on his stomach. He bunches the pillow up in his arms, gripping it and burying his face against the pillowcase, as though he can distance himself from whatever Sam is about to do. As though Sam will let him distance himself.

When Sam’s hand lands on his shoulder, Dean flinches—a brief twitch before catching himself. His breath catches as he waits to be berated for the slip, but Sam doesn’t seem to have noticed, silently trailing his fingertips over the tattoo and using that connection to sink deeper inside of Dean’s soul. It’s hard to breathe with so much of Sam pouring into him—Dean doesn’t have room for himself and Sam and Sam’s fury, and after a few seconds of struggle everything but the most basic level of thought fades, leaving him limp and submissive in Sam’s hold.

When a tendril of Sam’s power ghosts over Dean’s ass and between his thighs, Dean responds to the unspoken demand and spreads.

“You’re mine.”

Sam’s voice seems to come from everywhere—stroking Dean both from within and without. Impossible to escape or refute.

“No matter what they do, no matter how many cities they take, they’re never getting _you_. Do you hear me, Dean? They. Can’t. Have. You.”

He forces his way deeper with each word, driving first grunts and then breathless whines from Dean’s mouth. The pillow swallows most of the noise, but Dean is past caring for his dignity anyway. He’s too full of Sam to think of anything else; the tendrils of power playing over his ass and between his parted thighs are nothing more than a minor distraction compared to having Sam’s power sunk so deep in his body and mind and soul.

Moisture seeps from Dean’s eyes where they’re squeezed shut, dampening the pillow and wetting his cheeks, as—for the first time since he decided to try surrender on for size—he feels his mind straining at sanity’s leash. This is it, he’s going over, he’s strung so tight he’ll be flung irretrievably far into the black—

And then Sam pulls away.

Dean snaps back into himself with a gasping shudder. He wants to curl up into a tight, defensive ball, but he can still feel his brother’s eyes on him ( _you don’t hide from me_ ) and manages to stay spread out where Sam put him. He’s shivering from the near miss. His insides ache from enduring such a deep, thorough penetration, but he also feels distressingly empty—as though being so full of Sam has stretched him in strange ways.

In a distant, empty voice, Sam says, “There’s been a raid on D.C. I have to go handle the clean up.”

There’s a pause where Dean doesn’t dare to think anything, let alone respond, and when Sam speaks again he sounds a little more normal. He sounds more like the Sam Dean has been trying to pretend he lives with.

“I’m sorry about ...” He trails off, and Dean thinks of the old saying—if you can’t say it, you shouldn’t be doing it.

It’s possible he’s a little hysterical.

Sam clears his throat and then continues, “I’m going to need you tonight, Dean.” His hand lands on Dean’s shoulder—just a touch, caring and light, but Dean has to bite his lower lip to keep from flinching. “Just you and me, alright? We can curl up on the couch and watch a movie. I’m going to need—I need to touch you. I need you to remind me that you’re mine, okay?”

The press of Sam’s hand increases, growing possessive, and then he laughs shakily and the weight lifts away. The next thing Dean feels are his brother’s lips, gentle and soft, brushing over the nape of his neck. Just like it always does, the accompanying twinge of pain from the assortment of bite marks and hickies there sends confusing, hungry signals down to Dean’s cock and makes it twitch. Dean spares a second to be thankful it’s trapped against the bed, hidden away from prying eyes, and then Sam is straightening again.

“I love you.”

Dean’s gotten pretty good at choking those words out in return, but he can’t manage it today. He senses Sam waiting for them—pictures his brother fidgeting awkwardly, although of course the Sam in his mental image has hazel eyes instead of gold—and then hears him move toward the door. The door opens, closes a moment later, and it’s only then, when he’s sure that he’s alone, that Dean rolls onto his side and curls into himself, bringing his knees up to his chest and hugging them close.

Some days, it just doesn’t fucking pay to wake up.


	2. Chapter 2

He feels better a few hours later.

It took a half-hour shower ( _water temperature turned up just shy of scalding_ ), followed by a round of the sit-ups and push-ups he technically doesn’t need to do anymore. Not with Sam’s power thrumming through his body and maintaining him at the same, athletic peak he was in that night in the graveyard. But the familiar repetition of movement and straining muscle is still good for resetting his brain when things get too intense.

A second, quicker shower comes next, followed by a period of staring down at the sooty MET where it rises from the sea of ash and rubble. Dean doesn’t usually come out on the balcony—he knows Sam ordered it for his benefit, to give him a little fresh air, to show that he trusts Dean not to make another mistake, but all it does is make Dean even more painfully aware of how tightly caged he is. Today, he needs the reminder—needs help remembering why he decided surrender was the only option left—and by the time he’s chilled from the wind and has to go back inside, he has managed to rework this morning’s near miss into a more comfortable configuration.

Sam was upset. He was upset and he needed Dean to comfort him and calm him down. Fuck-up though he is, Dean somehow managed to perform as required—at least, Sam seemed saner when he left than he did when he first stormed out from the study.

And the whole soul-groping thing was clearly Dean’s fault for not turning over faster. Sam just wanted to look at the tattoo and remind himself that he wasn’t alone in this. Sam was worried for Dean’s safety.

Dean’s the one who needs to apologize for his erratic, obstinate behavior. He has to show Sam just how committed he is to making this work.

Tonight, when Sam gets back, Dean is going to be waiting on their new couch with Die Hard cued up on the TV. He’s going to hold his brother ( _or let Sam hold him, whichever way Sam wants to play it_ ), and they’re going to watch John McClane make things go boom. And then, probably sometime around McClane’s ‘Yippie-Kai-Yay, motherfucker’, Dean will give Sam a hand job ( _it’s always easier to give than to receive, for some reason_ ) and they’ll put the whole sorry incident behind them.

Course set, Dean lets out a slow, shaky breath and heads over to the dumb waiter—a necessary improvement on the suite, since Sam refuses to let anyone up here now that renovations are complete. Dean raps his knuckles on the closed panel twice and then stands there, waiting. When the panel slides back a few minutes later, revealing a covered tray, he reaches in to retrieve it, careful to keep the cuffs outside of the shaft and in the suite so that he won’t set off the warding.

Not that the dumb waiter is large enough for him to fit through. This particular precaution is just more of Sam’s paranoia, same as the wards Dean knows would catch him if he tried taking a swan dive over the edge of the balcony. As if Dean’s awareness of how close he came to killing a shitload of kids isn’t keeping him on his best behavior. So far, it seems that he’s managed to dodge that bullet—two bullets, actually, since Sam hasn’t found out about his weak-ass attempt to jump out the window the first time it blew out—but he isn’t going to be that lucky again and he knows it.

Hell, even if he could somehow succeed in offing himself, Sam would probably just get that blue-eyed bitch to bring him back again.

The appetizing scent of roast beef filters up through the metal cover, bringing Dean’s mind away from the window and back to his lunch, and his stomach rumbles as he takes the tray into the study to eat. He doesn’t need to come in here anymore, not now that the renovations are done, but he actually finds the room comforting after all those hours spent closeted inside.

It doesn’t hurt that Sam is always more business-like when he’s in here. He seems calmer, less grabby. Plus there are the books, which swap out whenever Dean is done reading the current batch, and serve as a blessed source of escape on which he never expected to rely.

Dean never was much of a reader Before. It takes him too long to work through the words, and anyway he always had more important things to do. He never saw the point in reading about someone else’s life when he could be out living his own.

But of course his list of approved activities has been drastically curtailed lately, and as slow as his plodding reading creeps along, it still moves faster than the glacial drip of unoccupied time. And, surprisingly, he _enjoys_ most of what he reads. It’s difficult to tell whether that’s because Sam has good taste or if Dean is just bored enough during the day that an in-depth description of drying paint would be a thrilling story.

Either way, it’s become habit to eat lunch sitting at his brother’s desk with a book open in front of him. For his part, Sam has taken to clearing the desk before leaving, giving Dean tacit permission to use it as a makeshift table. Dean isn’t sure if that gesture is an attempt to give him room to spread out, or if it’s just Sam hiding battle plans ( _what’s the fucking point, not like Dean could do anything about them_?), but Sam has been meticulous about his tidying.

This is the first time in a good, long while that Dean has walked into the room to find the polished surface of his brother’s desk all but hidden beneath a messy clutter of paper. Whatever news goaded Sam into this morning’s display must have distracted him enough that he forgot to put everything away.

The hopeful flutter in Dean’s chest takes him by surprise, as does the hot, strange taste in his mouth. Before he knows what he’s doing, he has put the tray on the floor and is rifling through Sam’s papers.

Laid out on top of the mess is a map of the States with far too much red on it. Sam’s color of choice seeps out to cover the eastern seaboard and the Midwestern states, then bleeds northward into Canada before dripping back down to stain Washington and Oregon. There are pockets of blue—the nearest in DC, Dean notices—but it seems clear that whatever resistance Sam is encountering is on the verge of collapse.

Below the map, Dean finds a list of cities and names—potential or current governors, maybe? Or perhaps these are generals waiting to carry out Sam’s wishes in places as close as Hartford and as distant as Salt Lake City? Another sheet clearly offers a tally of Sam’s demonic legions, grouped into regiments with notes on particular strengths. An open agenda book contains cryptic reminders such as ‘Miekhal to Dunbar, 30 by Tues’ and ‘reopen mines in D’.

And on every sheet, Dean reads the same word, scribbled over and over again in his brother’s neat, tidy penmanship.

 **Dean. Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean Dean**

His stomach turns and his hands shake where he’s holding a dispatch order, his name written in the margins at least twenty times.

Oh fuck, Sam really is insane.

And fixated, although Dean already knew that. Even if the knowledge feels a little sharper now, with his name glaring from every sheet he touches.

 _I make him better, though_ , Dean thinks, dropping the dispatch order back onto the desk and trying not to see the way that Sam has filled the Atlantic and Pacific with his name on the battle map, turning what should have been pale grey into an insane sea of black, carefully inked lines. _When he’s with me, sometimes ..._

Sometimes, it’s almost like having his brother back.

Dean carefully doesn’t look at any more of the papers as he gathers them into a neat pile. He isn’t going to mention this if Sam doesn’t. He’s just going to leave everything in a tidy stack on the floor so that he can eat his lunch here without spilling on something important. He turns to do just that and then stills, unease buried by a sudden, sharper flare of excitement.

The warded drawer is open.

Sam must have been really fucking distracted not to have shut this before he left. He must have been out of his goddamned _mind_.

Dean tightens his grip on his brother’s papers with his left hand and rubs his right over his mouth, staring down into the shadowed, one-inch gap. Whatever’s in there, he shouldn’t touch it. He’s heard the story about Pandora and the box; he knows he should leave this particular temptation alone.

But Sam locked and warded the drawer. He warded it specifically against Dean, actually, which begs the question why. What could be so important, so volatile, that Sam felt the need to lock it from Dean’s reach when they both know damn well that Dean can’t do anything from up here.

Or maybe he can.

Maybe—just maybe—there really is a way out. Maybe there is such a thing as redemption. Oh, not for Dean; Dean gets that he’s beyond that. He understands that, for someone like him, it doesn’t get much better than this.

But there’s a whole world full of people out there. And there’s Sam.

And even if Dean can’t save anyone, even if he can’t drag his brother back out of the darkness that Sam invited into himself ( _did it for me, not his fault_ ), then maybe he can still find a way to end all of this for good. Maybe there can be silence and rest.

Dean’s palms are sweating. His throat and mouth have gone dry and his pulse is pounding against the inside of his skull. The desire to look—to know—is overwhelming, regardless of what he’s sure are going to be dire consequences for breaking Sam’s trust like this, and he suddenly knows how Bluebeard’s youngest wife felt when faced with that damned cupboard.

There’s no way that Sam is not going to know he’s done this, but that doesn’t matter. If Sam is desperately hiding something from him, then Dean needs to know what it is. He has a responsibility to the world to find out what it is, even if he won’t be able to do anything with the knowledge. Even if the world has turned its back on him and doesn’t want his help anymore.

 _Bad road to start down,_ a tiny voice at the back of his mind whispers. _You’re supposed to be adjusting, not looking for ways out that aren’t there._

Dean hesitates for a second longer and then, hoarsely, whispers, “Fuck it.”

He’ll look, and Sam will yell at him and then Dean will make it up to him. And then they’ll get back to normal, only without the nagging curiosity that prods at the back of Dean’s mind every time he thinks about the drawer.

 _Besides,_ he asks himself pragmatically, _how much worse could it actually get?_

Dropping the papers back on top of the desk, he crouches down and cautiously curls his fingers inside the drawer. He expects a weaker flare of warding at the very least, but all he feels is the worn edge of the antique wood. Apparently, the drawer needs to be completely closed in order for Sam’s protections to work. Licking his lips, Dean gets a firmer hold and eases the drawer open.

It’s nearly full, he sees as he looks down: books piled on top of one another in a neat stack. The topmost item is actually a notebook—one of those cheap, composition things that Sam used to tote to school all the time when they were kids, one for each class. In the subject line of this one, instead of English or Bio, Sam has written two words: _To Do_.

Something about those words strikes Dean as humorous—nervous hysteria, maybe—and he laughs under his breath as he reaches in with both hands, working the tips of his fingertips underneath the pile, and then pulls everything out. He sets the stack off to one side on Sam’s desk and then sits down in his brother’s chair.

 _Last chance_ , he thinks, looking at the unassuming cover of the notebook at the top of the pile. _Put everything back right now and walk away, and Sam might stop after a couple girls._

But instead, he takes a deep breath and takes the notebook off the top of the pile, opening to the first page before flipping through the rest of the notebook to find more of the same.

It’s a list—a really long, neatly written list.

Most of the names on it have been crossed off, indicating that whatever business Sam had with them is done now. Each name comes paired with several numbers—dates, Dean realizes after he stares at them for a few minutes. Some names are accompanied by a single date, others by a span. A few have separate dates listed months or even years apart.

It’s the first bit of his brother’s writing that Dean has found without his name superimposed in odd corners.

As Dean flips through the pages, the surreal, black humor he was feeling curls into something nauseous and uncertain. He thinks again about putting the pile of books away, about calling out with his mind for Sam to come back and save Dean from himself—Sam would hear if Dean though loud enough, Dean knows he would. And right now, Dean thinks he would prefer Sam’s bloody brand of disappointment to working his way to an understanding of just what all these numbers and names ( _there must be hundreds here_ ) mean.

But he’s always been too stubborn for his own good, and there’s still that desperate hope that something in the pile will help ( _Sam_ ) this broken, rubble-strewn world, so he settles for shutting the notebook and setting it aside. He can come back to it later if he has to.

Taking down the next book in the pile, Dean finds himself looking at an oversized paperback titled Breaking Bad Habits in Horses. He frowns at the cover—stomach giving another uneasy, shifting roll that he does his best to ignore—and then grabs for another book, hoping to find something a little more comprehensible. But the second title—Gentling the Wild Stallion—seems just as useless and mundane as the first.

Dean can’t think of any reason why Sam would be interested in horses ( _unless he’s planning on outlawing cars or something equally stupid_ ), and even less reason why his brother would feel the need to lock these particular books out of sight where Dean couldn’t get at them. Maybe it’s all a big mistake? Or some incomprehensible symptom of Sam’s madness?

Dean starts to ease the cover of the second book open when he notices that the pile he took out of the drawer has started to take on a distinctly lopsided appearance. He lets go of the book, reaching out to steady the stack, and is a couple of seconds too late.

The pile topples over, spilling books across the desk—glossy photographs of horses on all of the covers. Dean’s eyes skim over the books and come to rest on the remaining two pieces of the stack. The bottom piece—the base of the pile, which used to be buried at the bottom of the drawer—is a large, leather-bound tome. From its shape, Dean guesses it’s some kind of photo album or scrapbook, although the blank cover gives no hint as to what he’ll find inside.

It’s the second piece, the box sitting on top of that album, that made the stack topple and fall. The box isn’t as wide as the books that were resting on top of it: would’ve been easy to overbalance.

It’s the box that Dean can’t stop staring at now. The ornately carved mahogany box with its gold scrollwork in patterns that make Dean think of the lines inked into his back. The box seems to thrum, heating the air as he hesitantly passes his hand over it. When he dares to move his hand lower, brushing the lid with his fingertips, a spark of electricity shocks through him.

Whatever its contents, this box feels like a landmine enough to warrant Sam’s protections on the drawer.

Maybe this explains the horse books and Sam’s notebook as well—maybe the higher layers of the pile were meant as decoys, left there by Sam in case Dean did manage to open the drawer. Maybe Sam hoped that he would see the initial, harmless contents and wander away without digging down this far.

Taking care to keep his breathing even and slow, Dean eases the box out from the book it was half-buried beneath ( _The Modern Horseman’s Countdown to Broke: Real Do-It-Yourself Comprehensive Steps_ ) and pulls it in front of him. There’s no lock holding the lid closed. Nothing but a simple latch.

 _It’ll be warded,_ Dean thinks, but it isn’t.

Oh fuck, he wishes it were.

He’s on his feet with his back to the wall in an instant, pressing back with his shoulders as though he can push through the plaster and out the other side. The box lies on its side on the table where he dropped it. Dean can’t stop staring at the box’s treasure, tipped half out from its container. He can’t get a breath either, not with the panicked fluttering of those godforsaken memories in his head and the phantom weight of metal banding his throat.

The collar. The motherfucking collar. Sam said—he said he got rid of it. He said he destroyed the fucking thing.

It doesn’t look very destroyed from where Dean is standing, though. It looks lovingly polished and carefully kept, and Jesus Christ, Dean is going to be sick.

He manages to get his eyes shut, which is a good thing—what with the way the room was spinning around him and threatening to toss him onto the ground. In the self-imposed darkness, he finds it minutely easier to breathe as well, although he’s still shaky and there’s a bone-deep weakness infecting his limbs.

Fuck, he almost _touched_ it, and Sam—why would Sam have—why would he have kept—

But Dean can’t ask that question right now, even in the quiet of his own mind. Not if he’s going to remain coherent. So instead he focuses on slowing his breathing and reining in his heart, which is beating so violently in his chest that he’s worried his mind is going to shut down on him just so that it can bring his body back under control.

It takes almost twenty minutes, but Dean finally manages to pull himself back from full system failure. Another half hour, and he’s even worked up the guts to push the collar to the far edge of the table ( _using one of the horse books, like hell he’s going to touch the fucking thing_ ). He picks up the box long enough to dump it upside down on top of its nauseating cargo and then breathes a shaky sigh of relief at having at least gotten it out of sight for the time being.

Once the collar has been mostly dealt with ( _although Dean isn’t going to really feel better until it’s back in the box, and fuck if he’s looking forward to managing that_ ), Dean’s eyes flick back over Sam’s books. They’re probably only a screen for the collar, but he—he has to be sure. He has to know for a fact that the thoughts he hasn’t quite worked up to entertaining consciously are nothing but the products of his vicious imagination.

Avoiding the large, leather-bound album, he chooses a book—Six Months to a Well-Behaved Horse, the cover advertises—and opens it at random. The chapter he’s in is titled ‘Breaking A Problem Horse To Saddle’, and someone ( _not necessarily Sam, didn’t have to be_ ) has underlined three lines in the middle of the page.

Once your horse has become accustomed to the weight of the saddle, Dean reads, ease him into carrying more weight by gradual increments. The trick is to keep the increments as small as possible. If carefully accomplished, your horse will not notice the increasing weight.

In the margin, Dean reads, in his brother’s handwriting, **_Repetition and routine are key._**

So Sam read it. So he’s commenting to himself on the text. That doesn’t prove anything—especially not the suspicions that Dean is doing his best to kick away.

Still, Dean’s stomach moves restlessly as he puts the book down and picks up another, flipping through the pages until he finds another margin note, this time in a chapter on Yielding Exercises.

It is important, the underlined bit states, to allow your horse to resist at times in the initial stages of breaking. Do not punish him for attempts to shake off the bridle or saddle. It is better for him to associate yielding with rewards rather than resistance with punishment.

Sam has noted, _**Difficult to keep temper, but have seen positive effects of mixing praise and pleasure. Will try food next. D was dreaming about steaks last night. Way to a man’s heart.**_

There’s even a little smiley face.

Dean chokes, dropping the book and backing away from the desk. It’s a more sedate withdrawal this time—retreat rather than flight—but that’s only because his body can’t decide whether to freeze in place or run for cover. He’s shaking all over, his skin flushing hot and cold and then hot again as waves of intense, painful nausea grip him. Worse than the nausea, though, is the humiliated, violated feeling in his chest.

He still can’t quite wrap his head around all the evidence in front of him—doesn’t want to let the pieces fall together, to understand what use Sam has been putting these books to. But he can’t forget that steak dinner Sam arranged for them—back before Dean decided to try submitting. He remembers how pleased Sam was to see him eating, and how—fuck, how he’d been sated enough afterwards, stomach heavy and full, that he let Sam’s touches go on for a little longer than usual before shifting away.

And just like that, the last, thin veil of denial is ripped away from him.

Sam has been playing him. All this time, Sam has been—has been _training_ him, like Dean’s a goddamned animal. ‘Gentling’, that one book called it, and Dean feels pretty fucking gentled as he thinks back over the last few months ( _years_?).

Fuck, this time he really is going to throw up.

He manages to hold it until he reaches the bathroom, until he’s kneeling on the cool tile and clutching the toilet. It’s been a while since he was here, and that realization only makes his stomach heave more violently, because Sam’s been manipulating him—no, not even. Manipulation is something reserved for thinking people, not. Not a goddamned skittish _horse_.

When Dean’s stomach is finally empty and the cramping aftershocks are easing, he rests his forehead against the toilet seat and tries to float in the numb protection of shock. His mind won’t leave him alone, though, and he can’t stop wondering what other notes he’d find if he looked through the books. What underlined tidbits of wisdom and tips Sam found useful. Which methods he tried and discarded.

Dean remembers asking Sam if Sam were pushing him deliberately—working Dean up to the breaking point only to back off again by design rather than by accident—and Sam hadn’t answered. Hadn’t denied it, Dean sees now, although then it was easier to interpret the absence of a response as innocence.

And the collar. Sam still has the collar, which means he’s planning on using it on Dean again, whether Dean wants him to or not.

Dean has felt unclean for a while now—long enough that he’s gotten used to the feeling—but he’s never felt quite so soiled. He feels filthy, actually, despite the two showers. Sullied by Sam’s touches and his own submission and fuck, he actually believed Sam still loved him. How fucking stupid was that?

It’s a long while before Dean finds the strength to get up. He flushes the toilet first, then rinses his mouth out in the sink and brushes his teeth with rote, mechanical motions. He’s putting off what he knows he has to do next. It makes him a coward, but then again he’s been responding like a goddamned animal to Sam’s gentling methods, so what the fuck ever. It isn’t like he has anything resembling dignity to maintain here.

Eventually, though, there comes a moment when Dean can’t put it off any longer. Rinsing his teeth one last time, he puts his toothbrush away and heads back into the study.

Careful not to touch anything nasty, he picks up the box and then holds it at the edge of the desk. One of Sam’s training books proves useful as a prod to nudge the collar across the desk’s surface and off the side into its waiting container. Immediately dropping the book, Dean closes and latches the lid, and then drops the box back on the desk so that he can wipe his hands on his pants.

Piling Sam’s training books back into a stack isn’t quite as difficult, but Dean’s skin still crawls as he handles them. He can feel an imaginary bit in his mouth; a bridle covering his cheeks and pulling his head up high.

A morbid twinge of curiosity in his chest makes him wonder how close Sam thinks he is to accepting a rider’s weight, and the urge to look through the books for an answer is almost overwhelming. Dean recognizes the self-destructive impulse for what it is, though, and manages to force it down as he places the last book on top of the pile.

There are only two items from Sam’s drawer of horrors left to deal with now: Sam’s To Do List, and the leather-bound album. The imprint that Dean feels on the back cover ( _otherwise just as blank as the front_ ) when he lifts it, tells him that it’s store-bought rather than homemade, but that doesn’t make the leather feel any less like human skin. It doesn’t chase the illusionary, hot scent of blood from his nose.

He’s already gone through the notebook once, but he puts the album back down in favor of a second look anyway—anything to postpone the final horror show just a little longer.

At first, Dean doesn’t notice any discernable order to the names—they aren’t arranged alphabetically or chronologically, or in any sort of order at all, as far as Dean can decipher. After a few minutes, though, he realizes that there are abbreviated headings at the top of each page. ‘Imp Tho’ reads one. ‘Cov’, another. Those two headings are the most frequent, and their lists easily fill two thirds of the notebook. The following sections are numbered—‘1st’, ‘2nd’, ‘3rd’, and ‘4th’. Then, there’s a listing for ‘Repeats’, whatever that means.

Dean turns to the final page, hoping to find a key or a legend there—something he can use to decode this mess—and instead there’s only the unhelpful heading ‘GF’, and a single, crossed out name beneath it.

  
~~C. Robinson. 08/12/03-08/23/03, 04/30/06-05/03/06~~   


Dean knows those dates. Connected with that timeframe, he knows that name.

His breath is coming faster again as he flips back a page, under ‘Repeats’, and takes a closer look.

 ~~T. Harrleson. 12/12/99, 04/15/00~~  
 ~~F. Carter 02/17/95, 07/02/97~~  
E. Bibb 01/08/02, 01/20/02  
 ~~J. Schaeffer 10/31/94, 05/12/04-05/16/04~~

 _Tina_ , he thinks numbly. _Frannie. Erin. Jen._

“Oh my God,” he breathes.

Distantly, he’s thankful for the numbness that accompanies the realization. He doesn’t know what he’d be doing otherwise, doesn’t know how he’d be reacting.

Not well.

In the wake of this new discovery, Dean already knows what he’s going to find in the leather-bound album, but he makes himself look anyway.

Most of the women are unrecognizable. Some of them, he doesn’t even know, and he guesses that those are the ones off of Sam’s ‘Imp Tho’ and ‘Cov’ lists. Others, he recalls all too well—he recognizes the wide, staring eyes even if Sam’s made too much of a mess of their faces for anything else to ring a bell. Anyway, Sam has helpfully labeled all of the photos with a name and a date. In the cases of the women Dean actually remembers, there’s a stretch of days listed, and even through the numbness of shock, he feels his chest fill with a useless, diffuse rage.

It isn’t that he thought all of these women were fine—most of the world has been buried in demons, of course there’ve been casualties. But he never suspected ( _should have, fucking well should have_ ) that Sam has been singling out his one-night stands for personal treatment. He never thought his brother was keeping track like this, that Sam has been systematically hunting those women down in some kind of fucked up extermination.

Dean makes himself look at every picture, every name. He assesses the damage in the images, compares it to how long Sam was at work, and by the time he’s done there are tears running down his cheeks. His throat is choked and too full, and if he had a knife available, he’d be using it to rip himself open.

Sam shouldn’t get to keep his prize. Not after this.

Cassie’s time with Sam took over a week. Nine fucking days with Sam’s undivided attention—how is that even possible?

But even now—even with all the evidence of what Sam has become laid out in front of him, there’s still a stupid, pathetically hopeful part of Dean that wants his brother to have an explanation for all of this.

There’s a rational, good reason for him to have kept the collar.

The notes in the margins of Sam’s horse training books aren’t about Dean. Not really. They’re just a manifestation of Sam’s preoccupation with him, sort of like the compulsory scribbles of Dean’s name all over Sam’s business papers.

The notebook with the names, and Sam’s photo album. Those ...

Well, Dean can’t actually come up with an explanation for those, but Sam’s bound to have one. Sam is—Sam will explain everything.

He has to.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean is waiting in his brother’s armchair when he hears the front door open. He has the notebook open in his lap and is flipping through it, trying to recall all of the women unlucky enough to have caught his attention and worked their way in here. He’s shamed and guilt-ridden to realize that he can’t. Not even for all the names on the 4th list—women he slept with when he was too drunk or distracted to take in the details.

“Dean?” Sam calls, sounding tired but much more cheerful than he did when he left in the morning. “I’m home.”

Just yesterday, that announcement would have brought Dean trotting faithfully out to give Sam his welcome back kiss, but today he sits where he is and waits.

“Dean?” Sam calls again, sounding a little puzzled now. “Hey, man, wha—”

His words die as he steps into the study doorway and sees Dean in the chair with the notebook open on his lap. Dean watches his brother’s face shutter into an emotionless, calm expression. Sam’s eyes flick from him over to the desk—to the box with its collar and the horse training books and the photo album all laid out in plain view where Dean left them. When he looks back at Dean, there’s a slight tension around his mouth.

“You left the drawer open,” Dean comments. His voice sounds amazingly steady for the pent up rage and sickened despair at war in his chest.

“I can explain.”

“Good,” Dean answers honestly—fervently—and then waits.

Sam looks at him, head tilting a little to one side as though trying to gauge Dean’s current mental state. He doesn’t say anything.

Dean gives him time. He gives his brother almost five whole minutes before he reluctantly concludes, “You don’t actually have an explanation, do you?”

Sam holds his silence for a beat longer and then says, “Put the notebook down and come here.”

He hasn’t admitted to Dean’s silent accusations in so many words, but the avoidance is as good as a confession. Dean feels the pain of confirmation only for an instant—flickering maelstrom that shreds him up inside ( _nothing but an animal to him, just a pretty pet_ )—and then he’s beyond feeling anything but numb. In that moment, he could easily obey the command. He could decide to continue on like this, and move through the rest of his existence as a well-trained whore for his brother. No mind of his own, no emotions except for the ones Sam wants him to feel, no thoughts but the ones Sam puts in his head.

He could be this. He might even, for the first time in his life, be good at this.

But something in him ( _blue eyes blue well loved lying to me said_ ) rebels and Dean’s hands tighten on the book. Meeting Sam’s eyes, he says, “No.”

Sam’s mouth tightens in a grimace of annoyance. “I’m not asking again.” The words are impatient, spoken in the same tone someone would use to call a disobedient mutt to heel.

And maybe Dean’s a pretty pathetic specimen, but he damn well isn’t a dog.

He feels his own mouth go hard as he says, “Your horsy training guides tell you what to do when the horse realizes it’s being played, _master_?”

“ **Come here, Dean.** ”

This time there’s power soaking the words, transforming them into a compulsion, and Dean’s movements aren’t even a little jerky as he gets to his feet and crosses the room to stand before Sam. Sam looks down at him, expressionless, and takes the notebook from Dean’s hand.

“ **Wait here,** ” Sam says, and the words echo in Dean’s head. “ **Quietly.** ”

Inside, over the surface of Dean’s numb core but beneath the slithering compulsion holding him in place, Dean seethes as he waits. He jerks at the tethers of Sam’s command, trying to slip free, and feels the distant glow of the demon’s power pulse brighter in response. It’s an interesting observation, and it has potential, but Dean doesn’t get a chance to pursue it because it only takes Sam a minute to return everything back to the drawer and then he’s back in front of Dean.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says, cupping Dean’s face and rubbing his thumbs over Dean’s cheekbones. “I know that you have some delicate sensibilities when it comes to women. But I want you to know, Dean, that I didn’t keep those pictures to punish you. You weren’t ever supposed to see.”

“How bout your library collection?” Dean shoots back as the compulsion to hold his tongue lifts. “Was I supposed to see that?”

He doesn’t bother trying to move away from his brother. There’s no point when Sam is in a tactile mood like this: he’d only hold Dean still again and follow. Or worse, issue another command. ‘Stay,’ maybe. Or, ‘stand’.

Sam’s expression turns earnest and he says, “I just feel so lost when it comes to you. I was trying to understand, but nothing was working, and then—Azazel suggested that sort of thing might help, and, Dean, it _has_. I mean, look at us. Look how far you’ve come. Does it really matter where the advice came from?”

Yes. Of course it fucking matters.

Dean doesn’t say it out loud, but he can tell that Sam is reading the answer in his eyes from the way his brother’s expression falls. The gloom only lasts for a moment before Sam smiles again, tender and verging on relieved, which is in no way a good sign.

And then Sam says, “I need you to forget everything that happened from the moment you woke up this morning until now, and then I need you to go to sleep for a little while, okay, baby?”

It’s couched as a request, but the flood of honeyed power that pours through Dean calls the lie. His eyes widen, horrified by the realization of just how much sway Sam has over him—over his mind, his very memories, _fuck_ —but he can already feel the landscape in his head changing. Bits and pieces of this morning are peeling away and flaking off—vanishing into the dark—and now Dean struggles, tossing his head and backing up. He runs into a solid wall of power and a moment later Sam’s lips are on his. Sam’s hands cradle his face as the invasive, corrosive power sinks deeper.

“Don’t fight it,” Sam whispers between kisses. “Just let it happen. It’ll be so much better after, Dean, I promise.”

Trapped by power on all sides, Dean screams inside his head—a silent, cornered roar of mingled rage and terror. There’s a single pulse in response—coming from the other side of the wall that Sam left in his head so many months ago, the one Dean hardly ever notices anymore. Power spills out, sulfuric and oily, but Dean is desperate and clings to the proffered lifeline.

Sam is still kissing him—light pecks deepening to heavier presses with a hint of tongue. His words have disintegrated into soothing mutters and inarticulate hums, but Dean isn’t sinking any longer, and as soon as he feels strong enough—as soon as the last of Sam’s memory-devouring power has been swept clean from his mind—he gets his hands up against his brother’s chest and _shoves_.

Sam staggers back, his expression shocked. He clearly wasn’t expecting any resistance—wasn’t expecting that not to work—and there’s a hint of anger in his eyes as he sends out a second, stronger wave of power.

It washes over Dean, and around him, and is gone. Oil over water.

Sam stares at him, breathing hard and—Christ, Dean would almost say his brother looks terrified.

“Looks like you don’t get to put this genie back in the lamp,” Dean says.

Sam’s expression hardens and he steps forward with a sharp motion, grabbing Dean’s arms and holding him still. Heady with his unexpected success and still a little dazed by his near miss, Dean tilts his head back and meets his brother’s eyes steadily. And then grunts as Sam claws into his mind, brushing past Dean’s clumsy, instinctive attempts to protect himself.

Dean loses track of things for a bit—he can’t think past Sam’s immense presence, Sam feeling over every idea or stray impulse he can get his hands on and then casting them aside again. He knows he makes some kind of noise when Sam finds his way to the wall, because that’s when the fingerlike tendrils of Sam’s power become blades. Sam digs into the wall, he tears it to shreds. He corrals the golden, dirty glow and buries it behind barbed wire and electrified fences and miles of rock and steel—so deep and tightly locked that even thinking about it makes Dean’s thoughts feel heavy and hobbled.

Then Sam releases him—a single, stark moment of clarity—and the world comes back long enough for Dean to see the fierce determination in his brother’s face as Sam says, “ **Forget.** ”

Power pours into him—not just a stream or a river, but the ocean. _All_ oceans, gold and thick like molasses and as corrosive as acid. It hurts—oh fuck, it hurts—but when the rush finally drains away, Dean is still himself. He remembers. He knows where he is, and what’s happening to him.

And he’s beginning to wonder why Sam is so goddamned flummoxed that this parlor trick isn’t working.

Dean can’t work up the energy or cohesion to push Sam away, but he can and does pant, “Fuck you,” as he slumps weakly against his brother’s chest.

Sam swears under his breath—Dean can’t decide whether his brother sounds more furious or frightened—and a moment later hooks of power dig into Dean’s back. He winces as he’s jerked off his feet and briefly dangled in midair before being dropped back into a heap on the floor.

“ **Get up** ,” Sam bites out, lacing the words with command.

Dean’s muscles are still trembling and weak from Sam’s assault, but he somehow manages to obey.

“ **Kiss me,** ” Sam says, and Dean does that too—fighting against the order the entire time. He hasn’t quite finished catching up to what all of this means, but he knows enough to be in a less than affectionate mood right now.

After the kiss, Sam seems to feel the need to drag his power all over Dean’s body, stirring his cock to life and igniting the tattoo, and Dean figures out right about then what his brother is doing.

Sam is testing the extent of his powers. He tried to take Dean’s memories from him and, somehow, Dean managed to get at enough of the yellow-eyed demon’s power to block that particular violation, even after Sam reburied that corruptive light behind a whole shitload of security measures. And now he’s running through a rapid-fire checklist of other things he’s done to Dean in the past, checking to see if they still—

It clicks and, despite the power-induced heat flexing through his body, Dean’s chest goes cold.

He gets his eyes up and catches Sam’s frantic, unhappy gaze.

“You did that to me before,” he spits.

Sam’s eyes widen—looks almost like Sammy for a moment, like the brother Dean remembers from Before—and he takes a couple of steps backward. The power humming through Dean vanishes instantly, which results in another collapse onto the floor. Dean would be embarrassed except for the fact that, for the first time since that night in the graveyard, Sam is looking at him with a shamed, guilty expression.

Like a little kid that just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Slowly, Dean recollects himself and gets back to his feet. He isn’t going to have this conversation sitting down.

“Answer me,” he says. The demand would sound a lot better if he could get more breath behind it, but he’s still feeling a little flattened and the weak rasp is all he can manage.

“You needed it, Dean,” Sam says, speaking quickly and urgently. “You don’t—there are things you don’t need to kno—”

“Like the fact that you’ve been breaking me in like your own personal My Little Pony?” Dean cuts in, speaking more strongly as he continues to recover.

Sam is silent for a long moment and Dean can see his brother working things through in his head. Finding a new, more persuasive angle to take.

When Sam starts with a placating, “Baby,” Dean interrupts to demand, “How many times?”

Sam just looks at him, expression hangdog with an edge of resentment. And maybe it’s not wise to provoke the boy king—especially after Sam just showed them both that all of his other tricks are still on the table—but Dean has fucking had it with today.

“How many times?” he repeats, barking the words out this time, and Sam flinches.

“Only three,” he says softly.

“Only…” Dean can’t keep back an incredulous, hard laugh. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me? What did you take?”

“Dean—”

“ _What the fuck did you take_ , you son of a bitch!”

“It’s gone now, Dean!” Sam yells back, still looking more flustered than frustrated. “What the hell does it matter?”

“Those are my memories, Sam! Mine. You don’t get to fucking—you can’t just. Christ!” He turns away, running both hands through his hair and trying to find the holes in his memory. Three times. Three moments Sam took from him.

Sam’s hand brushes his shoulder and Dean shrugs off the touch. He doesn’t move away, but he doesn’t turn around either. He can feel Sam’s eyes on him. Sam’s proximity beating into his back.

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispers finally.

Any of the things going through Dean’s head in response to that would mean murder—someone else’s insides spread over the freshly renovated room while Dean watches—so Dean clenches his jaw and says nothing.

After a long, drawn out silence, Sam offers, “The first time, I—I just got you back, remember? After that night when I raised Azazel. And I—I wanted you so much, Dean. I needed you. And I thought you’d be happy to be saved, and that we—we could just pick up where we left off.”

Dean’s changed his mind. He doesn’t want to hear this.

But he doesn’t say anything to stop his brother’s words, and in the next moment Sam says, “I fucked you. But it—I could tell it was hurting you, so I stopped. I stopped as soon as I knew something was wrong, I promise. But you wouldn’t—you wouldn’t let me touch you, and you kept. You kept trying to hurt yourself, and slipping further away, so I took the pain away and made it better. That wasn’t wrong, was it? It wasn’t—I was helping you, Dean.”

Sam’s touch comes again—Dean’s cheek this time—and Dean jerks his head to the other side. His insides are twisted up into writhing, painful knots as he tries to accept what’s happening—to take in the magnitude of this fresh betrayal.

What’s left to trust if he can’t even trust his own mind?

“T-the second time, I. With Cassie. You were—you said some things when I caught up with her, and I. I lost my temper. For a while. I—I kept you chained in the room while I… finished things.”

 _Nine days_ , Dean thinks, remembering Cassie’s entry in the photo album. His eyes burn with unshed tears, but he isn’t sure whom he’s crying for. Cassie? Himself? The kind-hearted little brother he doesn’t quite believe in anymore?

“By the time I calmed down, the damage was already done, but I—I remembered what I did before, and how it helped, so I fixed you.”

Sam’s hand is insistent on Dean’s shoulder as he finishes speaking—Dean can tell his brother won’t be allowing any more resistance on his part, and he comes around dutifully. He can’t decide whether he wants Sam to see how much this knowledge of his hidden past is unsettling him, but in the end that decision is taken away from him when Sam grips his chin and lifts his face up. Sam’s eyes are soft and coaxing. His smile is hopeful. Fond.

“And the third time I got a little overzealous on Valentine’s Day and freaked you out. I didn’t want to spoil the day with a couple accidental moments, so I just edited around them.” His smile widens. “See? Those aren’t memories you _want_ , Dean.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

Sam’s smile fades briefly before strengthening again. “Look, it’s done. I’m not doing it again, okay? A couple of bad memories aren’t important. Just like those books and those women aren’t important. This?”

Dean sucks in a sharp breath as Sam’s power flickers over him—and at the possessive, proprietary way Sam’s hand closes around Dean’s cock through his pants.

“This is what’s important,” Sam says, and then leans down, tilting his head to one side, and kisses Dean’s throat. “You and me,” he breathes, nuzzling the underside of Dean’s jaw.

It’s tempting to fall into that trap—yielding has become habit so easily, so seductively—and Dean is already shutting his eyes in submission when it occurs to him.

Sam’s been messing with his mind. Sam has been taking memories from him and leaving Dean completely unaware of the loss. How can Dean trust _any_ of his memories? How can he trust anything Sam says?

Maybe the blue-eyed Sam was right. Maybe his brother has been lying to him.

Dean doesn’t think that’s the case—not really—but even the faint sliver of doubt ( _and the collar, and the books, and the photo album, and Sam’s list of names, and his own stolen past_ ) is enough to tip the scales and jerk him back from the precipice he was throwing himself over headfirst. Hope and renewed determination flush through him, expanding his chest, and a heartbeat later he hunches over, crying out as agony rips through his back.

Sam’s hands are on him immediately. “Dean! What’s wrong?”

Dean shakes his head, tries to push his brother—murderer, liar, boy king—away, and then screams and drops to his knees as the pain doubles.

“Dean!” Sam yells, kneeling with him. “I can’t help if you don’t—”

“Jesus fucking _Christ_!” Dean spits, and slams his fist against the floor underneath a new, blinding agony. His vision whites out and then comes back in a faint, watery throb as he sobs and rounds his burning back.

Distantly, he senses Sam go still and stiff for a heartbeat and then his brother is fumbling at Dean’s shirt. “No,” Sam mumbles as he pulls at the fabric. “No, no no no. Don’t do this to me, Dean.”

Sam can’t work the shirt up Dean’s chest in the midst of the convulsions wracking him, so he ends up gripping the shirt in two hands and ripping it apart. Dean chokes briefly as the pull yanks the collar tight around his throat and then even that has been torn open and Sam is pushing the shirt to either side, exposing Dean’s back to the air.

It still hurts like hell, but the pain has lessened enough that Dean can endure it mostly silently and unresistingly, although he can still feel his back muscles twitching helplessly in reaction.

“You can’t,” Sam breathes in a hurt, lost little voice. “You can’t take it back. It doesn’t—it doesn’t work like that.” He brushes Dean’s spine with one finger and at the instantaneous, erotic pulse of energy that washes through him, Dean understands instantly what has happened.

Looks like the tattoo can revert back to older forms as well as evolve, even if the evolving is a lot more comfortable.

“No,” Sam says. “No, you were coming back to me. You’re mine. You’re _mine_!”

Dean manages a laugh at that—breath huffed out across the floor his cheek is mashed up against. “Sorry. Looks like you’re cut off again.”

“No. You can’t do that.”

There’s a warning thrum in Sam’s voice—a crackle of power in the air—but Dean’s giddy with relief ( _not damned after all, maybe; Christ, he forgot how good hope feels_ ) and just laughs again as Sam hauls him up onto his feet and drags him over to the desk. Dean finds himself turned and shoved down onto his back—Sam looming up between his legs before he can sit up and planting a hand on his chest to keep him down.

“Get off me,” Dean spits, struggling. Sam puts up with it long enough to rip the ruined shirt off of him and then heats the cuffs with a stray burst of power. The metal bracelets jerk Dean’s hands down onto the desk before dragging them up over his head, leaving him open and accessible. A trembling thread of disgusted, alarmed fear cuts through the relief and he jerks his hips. “Don’t,” he grunts, and then bites his lip as Sam rocks against him.

“You’re mine,” Sam growls, running his hands up Dean’s chest. “Say it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Say it!”

Dean glares up at his brother through a haze of power-imposed arousal and keeps his mouth shut.

Sam’s eyes sharpen as he leans down, lips just brushing over Dean’s. The weight of his power increases. “Kiss me,” he orders, but there’s no power to the words, and Dean doesn’t have to obey.

Turning his head to the side, he says, “Go ahead and force me, because that’s the only way you’re getting anything from me anymore, you son of a bitch.”

There’s a long, tense silence where Dean is dreadfully sure Sam will do just that, and then his brother whirls away and stalks out of the study door. Dean lies where he is, winded by the rapid shift of events and not wanting to attract any more of his brother’s attention at present, and a moment later he hears the main door to the suite slam.

For the first time, the noise sounds like a victory.


	3. Chapter 3

It requires twisting around into an uncomfortable, contorted position, but Dean can’t stop staring at his back in the mirror.

It’s the first time in months that he’s had the stomach to look at his reflection so frankly, and although he still can’t meet his eyes, the sight of the old, original configuration inked into his skin—thicker curving lines instead of all those slender, intricate tendrils—is addictive. Every second he studies the tattoo, he feels steadier, more like himself. A slow certainty is building inside of him—clarion knowledge that resisting is the right thing to do, determination not to forget himself again.

He can get through this. He can hold on long enough for help to get here.

Christ, Dean can’t wait to get to sleep tonight. He’s going to find that blue-eyed version of his brother and demand some goddamned answers. Specifics, things he can do on his end to be ready to act when the time comes.

“Baby, I’m home!”

The familiar sound of Sam’s voice douses the majority of Dean’s excitement and he tears his eyes off his reflection to glance through the open bathroom door into the main room. The solid ground he was standing on a moment before has tilted slightly off center.

Simple enough to feel confident with Sam gone, but even from here, Dean can sense his keeper’s expanding presence—Sam’s power reaching out through the suite in search of Dean and latching on to the tattoo. Power slithers over his skin, moving beneath his pants and coiling up between his thighs. His breath comes faster as his groin heats; it feels so damn good being felt up by Sam like this—even better, now that the tattoo has reverted and is sending throbs of arousal through him with every lingering caress.

Sam mucks everything up. He confuses things.

Not this time, Dean tells himself, but he only pauses long enough to pull a t-shirt on before responding to the unspoken demand and moving into the bathroom doorway, making himself visible.

The throb of power through the tattoo doesn’t stop, but it does let up until it’s no more than a faint, teasing play—a minor distraction that leaves Dean half hard in his pants. The phantom hands caressing his skin do halt, although Dean is only partially aware of the fact because he can see Sam from here, sees those familiar, hated eyes looking at him from that familiar, loved face.

And Sam isn’t alone.

“Dean!” Ben yells, straining forward against Sam’s restraining hold on his arm. There are tear tracks on his cheeks and he’s shaking, clearly terrified.

Dean darts forward before he knows he means to do anything, driven by instinct. He keeps expecting coils of Sam’s power to wrap around him, toss him onto the bed or against a wall so he has a front row seat for the show, but Sam just watches him come with a smile playing over his lips and amusement in his eyes. He lets Dean reach down and pull Ben away from him.

Ben’s arms immediately wrap around Dean’s neck and he buries his head against Dean’s shoulder, clinging to him tightly—crying again, from the way his body is shaking. Dean hoists Ben up into his arms with a tiny grunt of effort ( _kid’s gotten bigger since Dean saw him last_ ) and carries him away—fuck, where, though? The whole damn suite is a killing field. Dean hasn’t thought about what the room looked like before its renovations in some time, but now he remembers bone embedded in the ceiling, and bloodied smears of flesh on the walls, and fuck, fuck, if Sam did it once he’ll do it again.

After a brief, agonizing hesitation, Dean brings Ben over to the couch and sets him down on it, continually glancing back at Sam for any hint of pursuit.

He really, really doesn’t like the way his brother is smiling at him.

When Dean tries to straighten again, Ben’s arms tighten around his neck and he makes an inarticulate noise of protest that makes Dean’s chest ache.

“Hey,” he murmurs, reaching up and rubbing one of Ben’s arms reassuringly. “Ben, you’re okay. I’m not going anywhere, all right? I just want to get a look at you.”

Slowly—reluctantly—Ben’s arms loosen and he allows Dean to sit back enough to dart assessing eyes over his body.

Ben is older, which shouldn’t take Dean by surprise, but it does anyway. Dean’s internal clock has been shot to shit, time stretching out and then compressing until it could have been yesterday that he woke up facedown on a table. Or maybe that awakening never happened, and he’s always been here. Maybe everything else that he remembers—everything from before—is the lie.

But with Ben in front of him now, the forward march of time hits home solidly. Ben was eight the last time Dean clapped eyes on him—he must be ten now, maybe even eleven. Too old to be carried around the room by Dean, anyway, and his lower back is letting him know that in no uncertain terms.

Ben’s wearing jeans and a plain black t-shirt, two things that hold blood stains better than Dean’s peace of mind would like, but he isn’t bleeding anywhere obvious and he isn’t holding himself like he’s injured. He’s clearly scared shitless, but considering the smirking man standing over by the door, Dean can’t fault him that.

“Hey,” Dean says again, ruffling Ben’s hair with a shaky hand. “It’s good to see you, kid.”

“Dean,” Ben babbles, face scrunching up and chest hitching. “Dean, h-he—he h-hurt—”

And then there’s a wave of power and Ben’s eyes roll back in his head. He slumps to the side, limp and ( _not dead not dead please not dead_ ) unconscious. Dean frantically pats at Ben’s chest before remembering how to take a pulse and pressing two fingers to the kid’s throat.

“He’s just sleeping,” Sam says, sauntering closer.

Dean spares his brother’s approach a quick glance—it’d be stupid to ignore the predator in the room—but keeps his fingers where they are until he feels the slow, steady beat of Ben’s heart for himself. Only then does the fist around his heart unclench and his muscles tingle with a cool, thankful rush. Not that he has much time for relief with Sam almost on them.

Despite his protesting back, Dean starts to lift Ben again. Nowhere is safe, but he wants to get some more distance between them, wants to keep Ben away from Sam for as long as possible. Sam’s eyes flash in warning, though, and a flicker of heat throbs through his cuffs, and Dean stills. Sam hasn’t given any commands out loud, but it’s clear that running isn’t an option.

Not unless Dean wants to find out how it feels to have someone ripped apart in his arms.

He can’t retreat, can’t protect Ben in any meaningful way from whatever malignant purpose Sam brought him here to fulfill, but he isn’t going to leave him to face the darkness alone either. No matter how much his skin prickles as Sam comes close and leans over the back of the couch.

Sam looks at Dean for a moment, studying him as though gauging his response to the utterly thorough way he’s been blindsided, and then brushes Ben’s hair with two fingertips.

Dean tenses as all of his muscles tighten with the futile, stupid urge to punch Sam and run for the door with Ben in his arms. That’s a surefire way to get the kid killed, though, so he limits himself to growling, “If you hurt him, I swear to God, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Sam asks. His tone is mild, but the tendrils of power playing over Dean’s skin promise things that are anything but.

No matter what Sam has planned for Ben at present, it’ll be worse if Dean finishes that threat, empty though it is.

The righteous anger Dean has been doing his best to project collapses on a fresh wave of helpless fear.

“Please,” he whispers. “Sam, please don’t hurt him.”

“I don’t intend to,” Sam replies absently while continuing to stroke Ben’s hair. His expression as he peers down at the boy is almost tender. “Can’t hurt my own flesh and blood, now can I? Family’s important, Dean. You taught me that.”

Dean can’t follow that for a moment and then, as the words untangle in his head, he breathes, “He’s not. Lisa said he—”

He stops, realizing a little too late that this isn’t a misinterpretation of fact he should be correcting—not if it keeps Ben unconscious instead of dead—but Sam doesn’t seem concerned. In fact, there’s a distinctive gleam in his eyes as he lifts them to Dean’s face that tells Dean his protest played right into his brother’s hands.

“Go on,” Sam urges. “Lisa said…”

Dean doesn’t want to go any further down this road, but Sam’s gaze and the coaxing tug of power through the thick, black lines branding his back force the words from him anyway.

“She said he wasn’t mine.”

“Did she?” Sam returns mildly, and looks at him with steady, unblinking intensity.

As he meets his brother’s eyes, Dean’s stomach falls and his head spins. He still isn’t letting himself consider what Sam is suggesting, but he can feel the suspicion building as a clammy, tempestuous pressure against his thoughts. His expression stiffens as his breath catches, and Sam’s lips twitch up into a secretive smile.

He still doesn’t say anything more, but then again he doesn’t need to. Not with that satisfied, knowing expression on his face.

Suddenly, Dean isn’t _sure_. He’s filled with the same cloying dread that he felt in Lisa’s backyard, when he tallied up the years unfavorably, and he isn’t sure Lisa was telling the truth ( _wasn’t even sure then, had to hear it twice_ ). Fuck, he isn’t even sure the conversation he’s remembering ever actually happened. How can he be, when Sam has been playing Etch-A-Sketch with Dean’s memories?

If Sam can take moments away from Dean, how hard can it possibly be for him to slip some in?

Come to think of it, how the fuck is Dean supposed to trust _anything_ in his head?

Dean’s heart hammers against his ribcage, pulse steadily accelerating and growing erratic. His breath comes shallowly and the world seems to dim around him.

It’s bad enough that he has to consider the possibility of passing out, and he clings to consciousness with desperate, grasping fingernails. If he falls asleep now, there’s no guarantee that Ben won’t be gone when he wakes up—dead, maybe. Maybe smeared all over the couch and the ceiling and the walls, like a two-year old got into a butcher’s slop bin and went on a painting spree.

Dean’s stomach roils at the thought, but the nausea has the beneficial side effect of dragging him firmly back to the land of the self-aware. His breathing evens enough for the suite to brighten around him, and the painful throbbing of his heart subsides somewhat.

Even with his body mostly under control, inspecting his own memories is difficult. It’s hard to focus with Sam staring at him, with so much riding on his response to Sam’s insinuation, with his own fear of what he’ll find choking his airways. The problem isn’t going to vanish if he pretends it isn’t there, though, so Dean forces himself to look inward.

Prodding at the memories that fringe the moments Sam admits to having stolen is a little like feeling for handholds in the side of a cliff-face. Now that Dean knows what to look for, he finds obvious breaches—gaps that haven’t quite been soldered shut. The memories that border those breaks are rough-edged and obvious, and as much as the reminder that Sam has been messing with him on such a basic level terrifies and infuriates him, Dean also finds himself calming.

If Sam had done the kind of all encompassing, extensive tampering Dean feared, it stands to reason that Dean would be finding more of those disruptions in his head. Each moment he turns over, though—teaching Sam to drive and then offering him a blowjob when they didn’t end up wrapped around a tree; pulling his brother out of Everret High gymnasium ( _decorated like an underwater grotto, how cheesy is that_ ) and getting blown in the janitor’s supply closet; accepting Sam’s first, tentative kisses with Stanford just three weeks in their rearview—fits seamlessly within the progression of befores and afters.

So do Dean’s memories of his talks with Lisa in her nice, suburban home.

Sam didn’t put those memories in his head. Ben isn’t his.

Unless, of course, Lisa was lying.

“Why are you doing this?” Dean demands as his stomach makes another uncertain swoop.

“Maybe I just want to spend some time with my nephew,” Sam suggests in return, which is bullshit if Dean ever heard any.

“He’s not mine,” he says, and then makes himself take his hands off of Ben’s arms.

Maybe if Sam thinks Dean doesn’t care, if he thinks Ben isn’t important to him, he’ll get tired of this game and leave Ben alone.

But Sam’s smile widens into a grin. “You aren’t sure, though, are you, Dean? You’ll never be sure, not without a paternity test.”

“How likely are my chances of one of those?”

Sam ignores Dean’s dry, humorless question to muse, “I don’t suppose it really matters, of course. I could have picked any kid, really. That paternal instinct is just sort of hardwired into you—always was. But I wanted to be sure.”

He stops again, looking at Dean and waiting. Silently encouraging him to pull the choke collar tighter around his own neck.

Dean’s mouth is filled with a bitter taste as he obediently asks, “Sure of what?”

“That you’d let me fix this,” Sam answers. Folding his arms on the back of the couch, he rests his chin on his crossed forearms. His gaze is steady on Dean. Watchful and patient.

“Sam,” Dean whispers after a long moment of waiting to see whether this nightmarish conversation was going to bare its teeth. But it seems, after all, that it’s just Sam’s madness behind the wheel—Sam expecting things that Dean can’t possibly give him, like a child who squeezed his pet gerbil too hard and now wants to know why Alvin won’t keep running on his wheel. “You can’t—you can’t just _fix_ this. I don’t care how powerful you are, or—or what you do, I—you fucked with my head, my memories. You kept the goddamned collar. And those women, all those women you killed, I—even if I wanted to forgive you, I can’t just—”

“None of that matters,” Sam interrupts.

His voice is as empty and cold as Dean has ever heard it, and Dean hunches back a little. Self-revulsion follows the flinch, and he digs his fingers into the cushion of the couch and forces himself straighter.

Then Sam adds, “Because after tonight, you’re not going to remember any of it.”

Dean’s skin clenches with a cold, electric shock at the threat, but he clings to his newfound determination and insists, “You already tried that and it didn’t wor—”

His voice cuts off mid-word as a coil of power lashes around his throat, and Sam snaps, “It didn’t work because you didn’t _let_ it work.”

The coil slithers tighter, making it difficult to breathe, and Dean can’t help reaching up. His fingers scratch at nothing, pass uselessly through the throb of power and fall down again to clutch at one of the couch’s seat cushions.

“But you’re going to open up and let me do whatever I want now,” Sam continues in a more restrained tone of voice. “Because you don’t want me upset. Not with Ben in the room.”

 _No_ , Dean thinks—mostly in denial of what Sam is threatening, of Sam’s power exploding out and finding a target in Ben, although there’s more than a little of a horrified plea for himself in there as well.

Sam’s eyes glitter unpleasantly—the eyes of a cat watching a plump mouse wander blindly into a killing zone between its paws—and he doesn’t give Dean more than a few seconds to process the inevitability of submission before he says, “I want you on the bed. Face down and shirt off.” He smiles, then: tight and insincere. “Get there quickly enough and you can have a little one-on-one time with your son before he goes back to his cell.”

Taking one last look at Ben’s slack face, Dean gets moving before horror can root him to the floor. As he moves toward the bed, his eyes burn. His hands are trembling badly enough that it takes a few tries to get a good enough grip on his shirt to take it off. He’s sweating, but deep inside, way down where he didn’t think it was possible to feel anything, Dean is filled with numb, creeping ice.

This must be what the long walk from the prison cell to the electric chair feels like for a man on death row.

The bitter, horrified dread makes more sense than Dean wants it to. This is, after all, going to be a whole hell of a lot like dying. The Dean that gets up from the bed once Sam is done with him isn’t going to resemble the Dean currently crawling onto it. The only thing they’re going to have in common is the too goddamned pretty shell housing their mutilated, cringing minds.

Dean chokes on his rising gorge as he lowers himself down onto his stomach, then clenches his jaw and swallows it down again while squeezing his eyes shut. Heat burns and tingles behind his eyelids anyway, and he fucking hates that he’s doing this now. That he’s crying. Fucking figures he can’t spend his last few minutes as himself maintaining at least the outward appearance of being a man Dad could be proud of.

As soon as Dean’s bare stomach slides against the sheets, the coils of power fall away from his throat. Breathing more easily now, he swallows around an aching lump and finishes lying down. His hands move down the mattress until they come to rest, palms up, on either side of his hips.

He waits, listening to the silence in the room. He listens to the erratic beating of his heart and his own frantic, terrified thoughts.

“Good boy,” Sam says from somewhere near Dean’s feet, and Dean jumps. He didn’t hear his brother move. Didn’t sense his approach.

But he feels Sam’s hands when they close around his ankles like shackles. Sam grips him briefly before moving his hands in a slow, caressing circle that makes Dean shiver and kick his right foot in involuntary protest.

“Shh,” Sam coos—he doesn’t sound angry, not yet, but Dean’s insides give a jarring swoop anyway. He bites his lip and stills, ordering himself not to react as Sam’s hands glide up the backs of his legs. There’s a dip in the mattress when Sam’s hands reach Dean’s ass—Sam’s knee coming up on the bed between Dean’s calves. Then another dip as Sam’s covetous touch finds Dean’s bare lower back.

The connection sends heat through Dean’s body, waking his libido without his permission. His cock, which softened during their conversation by the couch, rouses again. Dean stirs in protest—he doesn’t want to feel like this now, doesn’t want to like having his mind torn apart even a little—but Sam presses down more firmly, spreading his fingers wide and digging his nails into Dean’s back hard enough to dimple skin. Power sinks into him as well, snaking down his front to nestle with a throb between his legs.

Dean opens his mouth and pants into the bed. His hands curl into fists.

“I have to admit I missed this,” Sam muses, sending more power into the lines of the tattoo. “Being able to send you into a frenzy with nothing more than a brush of my fingers.”

Power-fueled arousal clogs Dean’s body and mind and his cock swells. Helplessly, he shifts his legs wider to accommodate the bulge of his erection and Sam’s power takes the opportunity to expand where it’s been toying between his legs, claiming every last available centimeter of space. It isn’t until Sam straddles his hips and rubs himself against Dean’s ass, though, that a reluctant groan slips from Dean’s mouth.

The distant memory of what it feels like to have Sam do that for real is strong enough that the arousal doesn’t fade when Sam takes his hands off of Dean’s back and closes them around his wrists instead. Maybe it dims a little—a barely noticeable shift in the fire’s fuel—but Dean is shamefully aware that it’s his own desire keeping him on edge.

Even now, even after the revelations of today—even when Sam is preparing to violate him in the deepest, most horrifying way possible—he still wants the body behind him.

He squirms as Sam drags his hands up over his head, not sure whether he’s trying to get away from the cock digging into his ass or push back against it. Radiating amusement, Sam leans closer. His mouth finds Dean’s ear and he flicks his tongue out, slowly licking around the shell before biting down.

This time, it’s more of a whine coming from Dean’s throat, and Sam chuckles as he releases Dean’s ear without moving his mouth away.

“I think maybe you should ditch the pants as well,” he purrs, running his hands back down Dean’s arms and over his sides.

Dean has time to suck in a breath and then Sam has shoved his hand between Dean’s crotch and the bed. His fingers find the hard outline of Dean’s cock and grip before Dean can do more than begin to twitch away. Dean clenches his hands more tightly into fists as Sam gives him a gentle squeeze.

“After all,” Sam chuckles, “you’ll be in a much more agreeable mood in a few minutes.”

“You do this,” Dean blurts, scrambling after one last, desperate argument. “Sam, you do this and it won’t be me. You gotta see that, man. You can’t—you can’t just rip my mind apart every time something happens that you don’t like. And it won’t—even if I do let you touch me after, I’m not—it won’t count. _It won’t be me_ , don’t you _get_ that?”

“Don’t be scared,” Sam answers obliviously, and nudges the nape of Dean’s neck with his nose.

Dean isn’t sure if his brother can’t understand what he said or if Sam is deliberately ignoring his protests. Not that it matters, with Sam’s body pressing him down into the bed, Sam’s demands edging Dean toward a dark, lightning edged chasm from which there’s no coming back.

“This’ll only hurt for a few moments,” Sam continues as a tear presses out from beneath Dean’s closed eyelids. “And then we’ll be together again. Everything will be the way it’s supposed to.”

Swallowing thickly to clear his throat, Dean rasps, “I’ll never forgive you, you son of a bitch—I swear to God, I won’t.”

Sam goes still and quiet on top of him. His hesitation is a perceptible shift in the air. It leaves a sweet, almost cloying taste in the back of Dean’s mouth.

Then Sam says, “You won’t remember.”

 

“No,” Dean protests, his breath going erratic as his tears come faster. “Don’t—fuck, _don’t_.”

Wordlessly, Sam sets his mouth to Dean’s nape—his spot, always and forever—and sends out a thread of power that heats the cuffs around Dean’s wrists. Dean’s hands are locked where they are, stretched up above his head with his knuckles just brushing the headboard. Sam’s mind settles over Dean’s like an acidic mist, eating through the outer, defensive layer and seeping down deep within moments.

 **You’ll love me again when this is over,** Sam’s voice promises, echoing through Dean’s insides. **Just open for me. Open up and let me make it all better.**

Now that the moment is on him, not even the thrum of Sam’s power is enough to keep Dean hard. Sam doesn’t seem to notice the change, still rhythmically working Dean’s softening cock with one hand while mouthing wetly at the back of his neck. His body is a suffocating, crushing weight.

Tears continue to slip down Dean’s cheeks as the tide of his brother’s power rises within him and he clenches up in involuntary, reflexive resistance.

 **You promised,** Sam’s voice comes again—less soothing now; carrying wrathful, red overtones. **Let it happen. Let it happen, Dean.**

But Dean is on the verge of panic—Sam is everywhere, blanketing him and filling his mind, and he’s about to rip Dean’s memories apart, and Dean can’t—fuck, he can’t get any air.

Sam’s mouth releases his neck, which is a relief only for the few seconds it takes Sam to reposition his lips against Dean’s ear and hiss, “Lie back and spread, baby. You might not have any civilians to protect anymore, but you think of Ben. You go ahead and think of what I’ll do to him if you keep being so fucking difficult.”

More moisture wets Dean’s cheeks and the sides of his nose as he struggles to do what Sam demands, focusing his willpower on relaxing his mind, on letting this happen. He knows he’s succeeding by the way Sam’s hands soften on his body, the way his brother’s mouth returns to his nape to resume its teasing nips and sucks. Sam’s power seeps back in, covering Dean’s mind like fire-flecked fog and smothering his thoughts in fire. Light blossoms unexpectedly in response, sullen and yellow and sulfuric, and Dean groans as the weight of his brother’s power increases abruptly.

He’s blinded now, caught between Sam’s burning luminance and that glowering, unfocused yellow glow. The growing tension inside of him is swiftly swirling into a cyclone, threatening not just a couple of memories, but everything. Threatening to tear him apart.

Building pressure shoves at the inside of Dean’s skull. A scream builds in his throat—of pain, mostly, because this really fucking hurts, but there’s a healthy dose of fear and rage in there as well. The raging, snarling tension swells until Dean is shaking with it and then, abruptly, vanishes.

Dean’s scream gets stuck behind the sharp breath he takes to fill his burning lungs and provide some much needed oxygen to his lungs. In the aftermath, he steals a few, shocked seconds to register the memories that are still very much intact and the slowly fading, dirty glow covering his thoughts.

Then it hits him that Sam isn’t blanketing him anymore, Sam is gone, and images of what Sam could be doing right now flash through his mind.

Dean pushes himself up, twisting around and looking toward the couch. Toward Ben, who is going to pay for Dean’s inability to keep his hands out of a drawer Sam clearly didn’t intend for him to touch. Sam isn’t quite there yet, is standing at the foot of the bed staring at Dean instead, but fury rolls through his eyes like storm clouds, and Dean knows damn well where this is headed.

“Don’t,” he chokes out, turning over more fully and sliding down to the bottom of the bed. His stomach turns over as he reaches for his brother, but he doesn’t let that stop him from gripping the front of Sam’s shirt and clinging to it. “I tried, I did—I wasn’t trying to stop you. Don’t hurt him, Sam, please.”

Sam stares down at Dean for a moment longer and then says, tonelessly, “I believe you.”

Dean sags. His muscles loosen and shiver with the surge of relief that runs through him. His head spins. “Oh thank God.”

But then Sam is unhooking Dean’s hands from his shirt and moving away—moving toward Ben.

Heart immediately back in his throat, Dean tries to follow and is brought up short by the cuffs around his wrists, which seem tethered to the headboard. There aren’t any visible restraints, but he can feel the phantom lines of power humming between the cuffs and the wooden posts of the bed. He feels them jerk taut with each lunging attempt to get off the bed and stop Sam from getting any closer to the unconscious, helpless child on the couch.

“No!” he shouts, fighting to struggle forward anyway. “No, damn it, I did what you said. Don’t! Don’t hurt him!”

Sam doesn’t so much as glance at Dean as he bends over and scoops up Ben. It seems effortless for him, and the boy’s body hangs limply from his arms like a rag doll. Bands of panic tighten around Dean’s chest as Sam turns around and moves back toward the bed.

“This is important to you, isn’t it?” Sam asks, gesturing with Ben. “Your son?”

Dean’s throat aches with the denial he wants to make—Ben isn’t his, can’t be for so many reasons—but Sam is right. He isn’t—won’t ever be—sure. And anyway, son or not, he can’t deny that he cares what happens to the kid.

“Yeah,” he whispers, and then licks his lips and adds, “Please.”

“Please what?” Sam asks, tilting his head in feigned consideration.

“Please don’t hurt him,” Dean begs dutifully. Sam is still staring down at him like he’s waiting for something, though, and after a few moments Dean realizes what it is. “Sammy.” His throat has tightened enough that the word feels like it’s embedded with shards of glass, but somehow Dean gets it out without sounding too strangled.

“I don’t know how you managed to help yourself to Azazel’s power,” Sam replies conversationally as he shifts Ben to one arm so that he can stroke the boy’s hair with his other hand. He has an odd expression on his face—at once curious and uncaring. “Or how you locked me out of your memories, but you and I are _not_ done, Dean. Your body, your mouth, your mind—those are mine. _I own you._ ”

Revulsion and refusal war with submission in Dean’s chest—he can’t belong to the thing Sam has become, he won’t—but his eyes focus on Ben’s lax face and he doesn’t say anything.

Sam’s lips twitch as though he knows what Dean is feeling anyway: a bubble of cruel humor that Dean instinctively senses he isn’t going to like. He’s proved right a moment later when Sam says, “Catch,” and tosses Ben in his direction with a helpful surge of power.

The carelessness and suddenness of the action leaves Dean unprepared to react, and he nearly fumbles the pass. He does grunt when Ben’s body knocks into his—the kid’s big enough now that, with the added momentum of Sam’s toss, Dean’ll be lucky if his chest and arms aren’t bruised tomorrow. His heart pounds—Christ, he isn’t sure what would have happened if he hadn’t caught Ben. What Sam might have done. What he might still do.

Holding Ben carefully against his chest, Dean edges backwards along the bed until he hits the headboard and then, finally, stops. He can feel Ben’s heart beating against his forearm where he’s holding the kid close to his front.

“I have a proposition for you,” Sam says from his place at the foot of the bed. “You can keep your son right here.” His arms spread wide to indicate the suite. “You can keep him nice and safe and happy, make sure he has everything he needs. In return, all you have to do is try.”

The moisture in Dean’s mouth dries up at the thought of what living with Ben here would be like—fuck, the immense pressure of the need to get every second right, to keep Sam happy... Dean won’t be able to function like that. He’s going to snap, and then he’s going to do something stupid, and then he’s going to get Ben killed.

Hoarsely, he protests, “That’s blackmail. You said—”

“There are consequences when you break the rules, Dean. You know that.”

Dean sort of wants to point out that he hasn’t broken any rules—at least none that Sam laid out explicitly—but he knows better. After all, he knew when he went looking in that drawer that Sam didn’t want him snooping around in there.

Anyway, Sam is the one calling the shots. Always has been.

“Define ‘try’,” he says finally, hating the feeling that he’s already as good as sending up the white flag.

“Come over here and I’ll show you.”

It takes all of Dean’s willpower to put Ben carefully down on the bed and stand up. This time when he moves forward, the cuffs around his wrists remain dormant. Sam watches him approach with a lazy, idle smile. When Dean stops just out of reach, his smile widens ( _like a crocodile’s, just like_ ) and he leans forward, hooking his fingers into the waistband of Dean’s pants and giving them a tug.

Dean takes a single, unwilling step closer, and then another, and Sam moves forward to meet him. He doesn’t take his hand out of the waistband of Dean’s pants, instead using his hold to rub his knuckles back and forth over Dean’s sensitive skin. Dean’s stomach twists and his breath stutters, making Sam chuckle.

“So nervous,” Sam murmurs. “You know what all those books you hate so much say about nervous stallions?”

Dean doesn’t actually, and he doesn’t want to know either. But he can’t say anything, too aware of Ben lying vulnerable in the bed behind him.

“They say,” Sam continues, answering his own question, “That if you’re gentle with him, the stallion will come to respond to your touch. All wild creatures crave tenderness. And I can be gentle, Dean. And tender.”

He leans forward, breath gusting out across Dean’s lips, and in the next moment they’re kissing. Or rather, Sam is kissing him and Dean is letting it happen. He lets Sam’s tongue push past his lips, lets his brother’s free hand slide around to cup his ass and hold him close.

Sam kisses him for what has to be at least ten minutes, his hand alternating between possessively gripping Dean’s ass and stroking his bare back, and then finally releases his mouth. He doesn’t move away, though, resting their foreheads together while he exhales heavily against Dean’s wet lips. The hand hooked down the front of Dean’s pants shifts inward so that Sam can suggestively run his thumb back and forth over the top button.

Dean’s instincts scream at him to shove Sam away. His skin is crawling at being touched so softly and intimately by someone who looks at him like an animal. Someone who has not only taken it upon himself to rip apart hundreds of women, but who has made himself a scrapbook of their torture and murders. Someone who didn’t even hesitate before reaching inside Dean’s head and rearranging things to suit himself.

But he still smells like Sammy, and even now there’s a tiny, resilient spark inside of Dean that wants.

Christ, he’s disgusting.

“If I say no?” he checks after a long moment.

Sam smiles, nuzzling Dean’s nose with his own. “Then he still stays,” he answers. “And you hope that I’m in a good mood. Because you know how upset I can get when I lose my happy thoughts, don’t you, baby? Might be an accident.”

Memories of twisted walls and the blown out picture window flicker through Dean’s head again. What could that sort of stray, destructive power do to flesh? To _Ben’s_ flesh? Could Sam do worse than the deliberate butchery Dean saw on the walls of this very suite? Worse seems impossible, but he’s learned not to underestimate his brother and can’t discount Sam’s potential.

Dean’s insides clench in violent, frustrated fury at having been backed so neatly into a corner, and even though he knows better, he can’t stop himself from growling, “Why don’t you just put the damn collar on me now, then?”

Sam must be in a tolerant mood, because he chuckles, finally pulling his hand out of Dean’s pants in order to reach up and stroke his cheek. “I don’t want a slave, Dean.”

“Bullshit.”

Sam’s hand hesitates and his lips thin. “I’m doing this for your own good,” he says in a carefully controlled voice. “One day, you’ll see that.”

Dean lets out a tiny, disbelieving laugh, and this time Sam drops his hand and steps back. His expression isn’t exactly pleased as he catches Dean’s eyes with his own.

“So here’s how this is going to work,” he says in a flat, uncompromising tone. “I’m going to remind you of all the reasons why you love me, and you’re going to let me. You want to mouth off, that’s fine. I think you know just where my tolerance for that lies.”

Yeah, Dean knows. It’s his ability to stay on the right side of that line that he has doubts about.

“Now, for my part, I’m going to do my best not to push too hard. But there are certain things I’m going to want.”

“Like what?” Dean asks.

“Your mouth,” Sam says, eyes dipping to Dean’s lips with a suggestive glint. Before Dean has time to do anything but start to stiffen, Sam continues, “Nothing too strenuous—just kissing, to start. And I don’t think I can go back to sleeping alone, so we’ll continue sharing a bed.”

Dean’s stomach rolls at the thought of trying to rest with Sam pressed up against him, but he pushes that image aside to ask, “What about Ben?”

“We’ll turn the study into his room,” Sam answers immediately. “Since I obviously can’t trust you with them yet, I’ll have my things moved to another floor.” He tilts his head slightly and adds, “You might not believe me, but I don’t like doing this. I just… I’m sorry, Dean, but I can’t lose you. And this thing, from today. You’re upset now, I get that, but you’ll get over it.”

He believes it, too. Honest to God believes that this is some sort of temper tantrum that Dean is throwing.

Further sickened by the evidence of his brother’s madness, Dean says, “You don’t get a free pass on this one, Sam.”

“That’s what you said when I left for Stanford,” Sam replies with a faint, sad smile. “We moved past it. Hell, things were _better_ afterward—we were stronger.” He nods, jaw firm with confidence. “You’ll come back to me again.”

Dean wants to argue and can’t. Because the thing is, he isn’t quite sure anymore that he won’t cave the way Sam is saying. Sam’s right about Stanford, after all. When Sam left, Dean promised himself they were through.

It’s a promise he broke almost as soon as Sam started making cow-eyes at him again.

Sam seems to take Dean’s silence for assent, because he clears his throat and moves around Dean toward the bed. “Let’s welcome your son, shall we?”

Ben comes awake on the heels of Sam’s question, opening his eyes to see Sam reaching for him, and screams. Thrashing, he scurries across the bed and off the far side, eyes wide as he looks around for some sort of escape. When he spots Dean, he sprints forward without hesitation and Dean moves to meet him with a guilty ache in his chest.

It’s his fault Ben is here right now. His fault Sam decided that the kid needed to be tormented like this. Because torment is what it is, forcing Ben to live with Sam when Ben is so obviously terrified of him.

“Dean,” Ben gasps, hiding behind Dean’s body and clinging to his waist. “Dean, h-help! He h-hurt m-my mom.”

Dean’s stomach twists and his eyes jerk up to find Sam. Sam, who is watching the two of them with an unconcerned, slightly amused expression.

“You son of a bitch,” Dean breathes. “You made him watch?”

“Children belong with their parents, Dean,” Sam replies calmly. “Why do you think I brought him here?”

“You don’t touch him,” Dean spits, backing up and easing Ben with him. “You don’t go near him.”

Sam’s eyes narrow at the order, and the cuffs on Dean’s wrists heat. “Careful,” he warns.

Dean presses his lips together, but apparently his expression gives his uncharitable thoughts away anyway, because Sam’s eyes darken. Dean has a split-second to tense and then power lashes through the room, catching him around the waist and hauling him away from Ben. He twists around, straining against Sam’s hold, and then grunts as he’s dropped and pushed down against the carpet. Power pours through the tattoo, lighting him up with arousal and leaving him barely able to lift his head, let alone get up.

He watches helplessly as Sam approaches Ben, who has backed into the couch and is shaking, obviously terrified. Dean struggles with himself, trying to catch hold of the anger and horror he knows he should be feeling right now, and can’t concentrate past the intense, almost painful throb of pleasure soaking into him. His muscles quiver as he moans.

“No!” Ben shouts. “Dean!”

Dean wrenches his head back up in time to see Sam’s fingertips brush Ben’s forehead—just the lightest, gentle touch, but Ben’s eyes roll back into his head so that all Dean can see of them is white. His body goes stiff. His facial muscles loosen, going slack. And then… he seems to shrink. The years melt from him—back to eight now, seven, six, five.

Then Sam drops his hand and Ben blinks, shaking his head. An instant later, the torrential pleasure holding Dean immobile evaporates. He shudders for a few moments, caught-up in the afterquakes, and then shakily pushes up to his hands and knees.

“Ben,” he rasps, reaching.

Ben’s face creases with confused concern as he looks over at Dean.

“Ben,” Dean calls again, his voice already coming little stronger.

Ben starts toward him now, moving awkwardly in clothes that are suddenly too big for him.

Sam catches him before he has gone more than a single step, lifting him up off the floor in a rush and—and fuck, he’s going to hurl Ben against the ceiling.

“Don’t!” Dean shouts, only to be ignored as Sam tosses Ben up lightly and then catches him again. And Ben is…

Ben is smiling— _laughing_ —and when Sam sets him back down onto his feet, he turns around and demands, “Again, Daddy! Throw me again!”

Dean stares.

Sam meets his eyes over Ben’s head and, grinning, says, “I think your other daddy wants a hug first.”

Ben twists, looking back at Dean, and then runs over, jumping onto Dean’s back and throwing his arms around Dean’s neck in a tight hug. “Can we play Candyland tonight?” he asks as he hangs there. He doesn’t sound traumatized at all. Doesn’t seem to care when Sam comes over and lifts him off of Dean.

Dean looks up at his brother, who is casually holding Ben in his arms like the kid belongs there—like Sam didn’t threaten to kill him less than five minutes ago. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know where to start.

After a few moments, Sam puts Ben down again and gives him a gentle push between the shoulder blades. “How about you head over into the next room for a minute, buddy?” he asks. “I need to talk to your other daddy for a sec.”

“Can’t I stay here with you?” Ben asks, looking up at him with earnest longing that leaves Dean’s chest cold.

“Just for a minute,” Sam repeats, and when he says, “ **Go on** ,” the words are laced with power.

Ben goes.

Dean watches him leave, stumbling over the too-long cuffs of his pants as he passes through the doorway of the study. His throat unlocks as soon as Ben disappears from sight and he says, “What the fuck did you do to him?”

“Rewound time a little,” Sam answers, unsmiling again now that Ben is in the other room. “Changed some details around in his mind.”

“You can’t—he’s a person, Sam, you can’t just—”

“You want me to put him back?”

Dean closes his mouth. He thinks of how terrified Ben was a moment before—fuck, can he condemn the kid to that? To knowingly living with his mother’s murderer? Dean saw the photo of Lisa in Sam’s album, and if Ben only saw half of that, it still would’ve been enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life. Even without forcing him to face Sam every day.

After a few moments, Dean licks his lips and says, “You could have just made him forget about it. You didn’t have to—it didn’t have to be this.”

“All or nothing, Dean,” Sam replies mercilessly. “It’s your choice.”

Dean presses his eyes shut—Sam’s doing this deliberately, damn it. He’s doing it because he knows that Dean has always been stupidly devoted to the notion of family. Because he thinks that creating some sort of fake Stepford home is going to make Dean drop his guard.

Or give him more to lose.

When Dean opens his eyes again, Sam is smiling at him. It’s clear that his brother already knows what Dean’s choice is. What it has to be, since Sam has left him no other options.

“Best behavior,” Sam reminds him, and then, raising his voice, calls, “Who wants chocolate cake?”

As Ben comes running from the other room, face flushed with excitement, Dean schools his own expression and tries to smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interestingly (or not) enough, I planned on including Ben's character since about a third of the way through S3. You can likely imagine how annoyed I was when Kripke and Co. went and completely derailed the plan by bringing him back again on their own, in a way that I knew was going to screw around with the dynamics here. But no matter how much I begged my muse, she remained adamant about this plot point, so... yeah. This is all to say, sorry for the wait; this part would have been up a LOT sooner if Show hadn't been messing with me. :)


End file.
